Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

China Scholars Series

Chang Fu-yun

*JV^— j£

(Courtesy name: Ching-wen --^r *5
REFORMER OF THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS

Interviews Conducted by
Elaine C. Gaustad

and

Rhoda Chang
in 1976, 1979, and 1983

Copyright (c) 1987 by The Regents of the University of California

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a letter of
agreement between the University of California and
Chang Fu-yun dated 18 July 1983. The manuscript is thereby
made available for research purposes. All literary rights
in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are
reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be
quoted for publication without the written permission of
the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley. Publication rights have been reserved
to the heirs of Chang Fu-yun until 1 January 2012.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
486 Library, and should include identification of the
specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the
passages, and identification of the user. The letter of
agreement with Chang Fu-yun requires that his heirs be
notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to
respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as
follows:

Chang Fu-yun, "Reformer of the Chinese Maritime
Customs," an oral history conducted 1976, 1979,
and 1983 by Blaine C. Gaustad and Rhoda Chang,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1987.

Copy No.

CHANG FU-YUN

China Scholars Series
Interviews Completed by 1987

Lessing, Ferdinand D. (1882-1961)
Early Years. 1963.

Chao Yuen-Ren (1892-1982)

Chinese Linguist, Phonologist, Composer and
Author. 1977.

Huff, Elizabeth (b . 1912)

Teacher and Founding Curator of the East
Asiastic Library. 1977.

Service, Caroline (b . 1909)

State Department Duty in China, the McCarthy
Era and After., 1933-1977. 1979.

Service, John S. (b . 1909)

State Department Duty in China, the McCarthy
Era and After, 1933-1977. 1979.

Chang Fu-Yun (1890-1983)

Reformer of the Chinese Maritime Customs. 1987,

Li Fang-Kuei (b . 1902)

Linguistics East and West: American Indian,
Sino-Tibetan, and Thai. In process.

TABLE OF CONTENTS — CHANG FU-YUN

Interview History i

Official Positions Held by Chang Fu-yun i-v

PART 1 : Interviews. 1983 1

I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD IN CHEFOO. SHANTUNG PROVINCE

Family Background and Father's Commercial Activities

Traditional Chinese Education

Early Missionary Education: Shih-i School

Decision to Pursue Western Style Education

Trip to Tsinan and Tientsin, c. 1907-1908

Boxer Indemnity Scholarship

Shih-i School Students Who Joined Chinese Army 10

Observations on the Boxer Rebellion. 1899-1900

Chang Fu-lai: Older Brother 14

Chang Fu-jung: Younger Sister

Chang Fu-hai: Younger Brother

Traditional Festivals

Father's Commercial Activities Continued

Shih-i School and Christianity 21

General Observations on Chinese History from the

Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 to 1920s 23

II COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY YEARS IN CHINA AND AMERICA 32

Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Examination

Ch'ing Hua College

Preparing to Go Abroad to Study

Trip to America

General Observations on Students Who Were Sent Abroad 40

Boxer Indemnity Examination 41

Incident of the Lost Fan 42

Touring California and Trip to Harvard 43

Undergraduate Years at Harvard 45

Student Life at Harvard and Chinese Student Alliance 48

Representing the Chinese Student Alliance in the Lin Case 49

Student Organizations

Friends and Acquaintances at Harvard

Conversion to Christianity 56

Harvard Curriculum and Choice of Law as Focus of Study 59

Observations on China and the West 62

Views on Political Reforms in China 65

The 1911 Revolution as Seen by Chinese Students in America 67

Harvard Law School 72

Return Trip to China 74

Treatment of Chinese in the United States 74

Ill EARLY PROFESSIONAL CAREER

Service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peking

Positions Held, Duties, and Responsibilities 78
Organization of Legal Affairs Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 80

Peking Politics and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 81

Observations on the Anfu Clique Rule, 1918 83

"Lectureship" at National Peking University 87

Observations on the May Fourth Movement 89

Chinese High Commission in Siberia, 1919 91

Life in Peking, Early 1920s 95

PART 2: "The Reformation £f_ the Chinese Customs, a Memoir" 102

A Note on How I Joined the Revolutionary Forces 102

The State of the Customs in 1927 107

The Dismissal of Sir Francis Aglen 111
My Resumption of the Office of Director General of the

Customs Administration 113
The Nationalist Government's Policy in Dealing with the

Customs during the Period of Divided Control 115
Edwardes1 Attempt to Win the Nationalist Government's Recognition 118
Edwardes1 Breach of Understanding Regarding Procedure

to be Followed in Effecting Staff Movements within

Nationalist Jurisdiction 121
The Appointment of Edwardes as Acting Inspector General by

the Nationalist Government 131

Maze Appointed Inspector General 136
My Resignation as Director General of the Customs Administration 140

Reminiscences of Meeting Sir Robert Hart's Relatives in London 141

Maze Calling on Me for Consultation 142

The Location of the Inspectorate General 144

Washington. San Francisco and Moscow 145

I Became Director General of Customs a Second Time 147

A New Threat to the Customs Administration from Within 149

PART 3 : Conversation between Felix Patrikeef f and Chang

(June 31. 1979) 152

Washington Conference, 1921-1922 152

Meeting with Sun Yat-sen 153

Chiao-t'ung University 156

Reflecting on the Joint Communique and Soviet Advisors 158

The Economic Situation 162

Assassination of Chang Tso-lin 164

Customs Administration 166

Comment on Japanese Ambitions in China 171
Siberian High Commission

Sino-Soviet Relations 175

PART A: Conversation between Virginia Kean, Rhoda Chang

and Chang Fu-yun (June 30, 1976) 178

Asia Foundation 178

APPENDIX I: Interview Outlines to Part I 181

APPENDIX II: Biographical Notices 184

APPENDIX III: Name List for Chinese Student's Alliance Photograph 193

GLOSSARY 195

INDEX 203

INTERVIEW HISTORY — CHANG FU-YUN

Mr. Chang Fu-yun was interviewed by the Bancroft Library
Regional Oral History Office primarily because of his role in
renegotiating tariff autonomy for the Republic of China in the late
1920s. By this act alone Mr. Chang would have been assured of a
significant place in the history of modern China, for control of the
Chinese Maritime Customs was. along with extraterritorial rights,
the primary means by which foreign powers were able to dominate
China during most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It was, however, Mr. Chang's firm conviction that China's problems
could not be resolved through the use of revolutionary violence;
rather he chose the path of quiet diplomacy and public service as
the most appropriate and effective means for him to help China
regain her rightful stature among the family of nations. To achieve
this end, Mr. Chang, during his long career, also served in many
positions of importance, both in the various Peking governments of
the 1920s, and the Nationalist government between 1927 and 1949. By
virtue of the positions he held, he was knowledgeable about the
internal affairs of the Nationalist government in particular, where
he was primarily active in financial and tariff matters.

The Regional Oral History Office had initially planned an
extensive series of interviews with Mr. Chang which were to have
encompassed his entire career. The project was, however, cut short
after only six interviews, because Mr. Chang suddenly passed away on
September 6, 1983. We were, therefore, only able to discuss his
life up to his service on the Chinese High Commission to the
Siberian Expedition in 1919. Fortunately, Mr. Chang had a number of
years earlier written a brief memoir on his role in reforming the
Chinese Maritime Customs. That memoir has been included in lieu of
information we were unable to get in interviews. Also, in June,
1979, Chang Fu-yun's daughter, Rhoda Chang, taped an informal talk
which her father had with Mr. Felix Patrikeeff, parts of which we
have also included. Due to Mr. Chang's untimely passing, his oral
history suffers from major gaps in information, though we have, by
use of this rather unorthodox method, at least been able to record
Mr. Chang's major achievements as well as provide some information
about other aspects of his career that will be of use to historians
of Republican China. Since the oral history is in four distinct
parts, I will describe each section in turn.

ii

Part one consists of six interviews I conducted with Chang Fu-
yun at his home in San Francisco between July 19. 1983 and August
31. 1983. Since Mr. Chang, then ninety-three, was extremely hard of
hearing, we worked out a system whereby several days prior to the
interview I would mail him outlines explaining the topics that I
wished him to cover at a given meeting. During an interview I would
on occasion ask him to clarify or expand on a particular point, but
Mr. Chang by and large followed the outlines which have been
included as Appendix One.

Since Chang Fu-yun passed away before having the opportunity to
either review my editorial work or make further comments, the task
was left solely to me. With the permission of his immediate family,
I edited the rough draft in a manner that I think would have been in
accordance with Chang Fu-yun' s wishes, while staying as close to the
spoken record as possible. Most of my editing has taken the form of
eliminating the kind of repetitive passages that inevitably creep
into an account of this kind. There are. however, points in the
taped interviews which remain unclear and 1 have indicated such in
the transcript. Since most of the people mentioned in Mr. Chang's
oral history were Chinese and he often used Chinese phrases to
illustrate a point, 1 was also faced with the problem of finding
Chinese characters to go with the names, many of which belonged to
people that Chang knew in his youth, but which appear in none of the
standard biographical sources. Despite an extensive search,
particularly on the part of Rhoda Chang among her father's friends,
we are still left with some persons for whom we have no characters.
On those occasions where I have been unable to supply characters in
the glossary, I have included the romanization of the name or word
in the hope that it can be filled in at some future date.

Part two consists of Chang Fu-yun's own memoir written in about
1975. Although the central theme of the memoir focuses on his role
in reforming the Chinese Maritime Customs and renegotiating tariff
autonomy, many other aspects of his later career are also touched
upon. I have included a verbatim transcription taken from his
personal manuscript. In several instances I have corrected
romanization in the interest of clarification: otherwise the text
remains as written by Mr. Chang. A copy of the manuscript has been
placed in Mr. Chang's file at The Bancroft Library.

Throughout his memoir Chang Fu-yun refers to documents which
were in his possession at the time of writing. We have been unable
to locate the documents among his possessions, though there are
indications that he may have donated them to Harvard University. We
have been unable to get confirmation from Harvard as of this
writing.

Parts three and four consist of two informal interviews
recorded by Rhoda Chang, one with Mr. Felix Patrikeeff in 1979, and
an earlier one in 1976 with Ms. Chang and Ms. Virginia Kean.

iii

Because these interviews were informal and unstructured, indeed were
never intended for inclusion in an oral history, there was much
redundancy and idle chit-chat unsuitable for our needs.
Nevertheless, the interviews also contained information which, given
the situation, we thought worthy of inclusion in the interests of
providing as much information as possible on Mr. Chang's life and
career. Rhoda Chang did extensive editorial work on the recorded
interviews, while making every effort to retain exactly what her
father said. Essentially Ms. Chang confined her editing to deleting
long sections we thought unusable. In some instances she also
changed the order of the information to give the interviews greater
overall consistency. She did not, however, alter the text of her
father's speech. For those who wish to consult them, copies of the
original transcripts are on file.

Part four, concerning Chang Fu-yun's employment with the Asia
Foundation in the 1950s, was edited by his eldest daughter Julia
Chang Bloch.

The oral history has been several years in the making primarily
because those working on it have had to make their contributions on
a part-time basis. Rhoda Chang, while employed as an attorney in a
law firm in Tokyo, gave graciously of her time during several trips
to the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong. On these trips she
attempted to gather further information about her father's career.
Julia Chang Bloch, despite a busy schedule as Assistant
Administrator of the Bureau for Food for. Peace and Voluntary
Assistance, A.I.D., was also able to assist the project by reading
the manuscript and offering suggestions for improvement. Chang Fu-
yun's wife, Eva I-hua Yeh Chang, owner of the Harbin Restaurant in
San Francisco, and his son, Samuel Chang, the manager of the
restaurant, also kindly provided amiable surroundings for a number
of conversations on her husband's career.

Thanks to Professor John Jamieson, Professor Frederic Wakeman,
Jr. and Mr. John S. Service of the University of California,
Berkeley, who provided advice and assistance in the early phases of
this project.

Finally, special thanks to Julia Chang Bloch and Stuart
Marshall Bloch for the financial assistance which made the project
possible.

Blaine Gaustad
Interviewer-editor

12 February, 1987
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

iv

OFFICIAL POSITIONS HELD BY CHANG FU-YUN

A. B. Cum Laude. Harvard College, 1914.

LL.B., Harvard Law School, 1917.

Lecturer on international law, Peking University, 1918-1919.

Secretary to the Chinese High Commission, Siberia, 1919-1920.

Junior Councillor in Wai-chiao Pu (Foreign Office), 1920-1923.

Member of the Legal Committee on Extra-territorial Jurisdiction, 1920-1922.

President of the University of Communications, Peking, 1922-1925.

Director General of the National Customs Administration and concurrently

Chairman of the National Tariff Commission, 1927-1932.

Member of the Advisory Committee of the National Economic Council, 1933-1937.
Director of the Research Department of the Bank of China, 1935-1945.
Special Assistant to the Chairman of China Defense Supplies, Washington,

D.C., 1943-1944.
Resident Consultant at Harvard University Graduate School of Public

Administration, 1944-1945.
Technical Expert on Law and Economics of the Chinese Delegation to the

United Nations Organization Conference, San Francisco, 1945.
Legal Advisor to the Chinese Mission in Moscow, 1945, which negotiated the

Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship on the basis of the Yalta Agreements.
Director General of the National Customs Administration and concurrently

Chairman of the National Tariff Commission, 1945-March 1949.
Vice-Chairman and then Chairman of the Enemy Property Commission (a quasi-
judicial body), 1945-1949.
Deputy Chief Delegate of the Chinese Delegation to the United Nations

Conference on Tariff and Trade, Havana, 1947-1948.

Member of the Executive Committee on the Import and Export Board, 1946-1948.
Advisor to Bank Of China, 1949.

Chang Fu-jung, Chang Yu-pen (father) ,
and Chang Fu-yun in Chefoo, China, ca.
1911.

Chang Fu-yun
ca. 1905

Right: Chang Fu-yun at Harvard
College, ca. 1914.

Beloi): The Chang family, ca. 1930s.
Left to right; Chang Fu-hai, Chang
Fu-jung, Chang Fu-lai, and Chang
Fu-yun. Chang Fu-yun 's mother,
Chang Sun-shih, seated.

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The Chang family in San Francisco, 1953. Clockwise from
top: Chang Fu-yun, Eva Chang, Samuel Chang, Rhoda Chang,
Julia Chang.

The Chang family in San Francisco, 1968.

Bottom to top: Eva Chang, Chang Fu-yun, Rhoda Chang,

Samuel Chang, Julia Chang Bloch.

Chang Fu-yun and Eva Chang in front of the Harbin Restaurant, San
Francisco, with the Y. R. Chao family, ca. late 1960s. Left to
right: Theodore Pien, Buwei Yang Chao, Eva Chang, Chang Fu-yun,
Iris Pien, Chao Yuen-jen.

Chang Fu-yun with his sister, Chang Fu-hai, and his daughter,
Julia Chang Bloch, in Tsingtao, China, 1978.

Julia Chang Bloch being sworn in as Assistant Administrator of the Bureau
for Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance, A.I.D. at the Department of
State, July 1981. Left to right: Bill Sigler (Director of Personnel,
A.I.D.), Chang Fu-yun, Julia Chang Bloch, and Stuart Bloch.

Chang Fu-yun's 90th birthday party, San Francisco, 1980.
(Chang Fu-yun, Rhoda Chang-, Julia Chang Bloch with back to
camera. )

Chang Fu-yun's 90th birthday party. Left to right: V. N. Chow, Laura Chow,
Eva Chang, Jennie Wong, Julia Chang Bloch, Patricia Yeh, Rhoda Chang. Rear:
Stuart Bloch, Chang Fu-yun, and Samuel Chang.

I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD IN CHEFOO. SHANTUNG PROVINCE
[Interview 1: July 19. 1983] ##

Family Background and Father' s Commercial Activities

Chang: I would like to begin by saying something about the origin of the

Chang surname. According to legend, Chang was the surname given by
the Hsuan-yuan Yellow Emperor to his fifth son, who was in charge of
arrows and nets. I think, thereafter, that became his profession.
The character Chang is composed of two radicals: kung, which means
bow; and ch'ang, which means long. Long bow. It means draw the
bow. So, that is the origin of the name and its meaning now. It is
a very ancient name, one of the most common names in China. There
are probably more people bearing the surname Chang than any other.
Probablyl Not the most, but it is one of the most common. So, you
can find Changs in every nook and cranny of China today.

Well, my father's ancestral home was not Shantung. His
ancestral home was at Hsi-ch'uan hsien, in Nan-yang fu. Honan
province. Honan is the central province of China, and, at one time,
Loyang, one of the major cities of the province, was the capital.
That's where my father's ancestral home was.

BCG: Was Hsi-ch'uan hsien near Loyang?

Chang: Not far. Not far. Honan borders on Hupeh. My father's birthplace
is on the southwestern side of Honan, where it borders on Hupeh.

I do not know when or how my father [Chang Yu-pen] left his native
hsien [county]. What I do know is that he left in order to escape
the devastation caused by the Taiping rebels, though I do not know
if he was in danger of suffering personal harm. The Taiping

rebellion started in two Kuang provinces [Kvangtung and Kwangsij. I
think, as they swept north in the 1850s, they had to fight local
militia as well as government troops in each province they entered.
The local militia was usually organized by the local gentry; for
example, Tseng Kuo-fan was in retirement when he organized the
militia to fight the rebels. When they overran a province, they
usually caused widespread destruction of property and slaughter of
many of the inhabitants. Even when they occupied Nanking, which
they made their capital for some years, fighting never ceased in
Chiang-che, the southern provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang.

I believe that when Taiping forces approached my father's
native hsien in Honan, people of means or standing left. They had
to leave, otherwise something would probably happen to them, because
the government troops were fighting there. So, I do not know
exactly when or how my father left his native place and found his
way to Shantung and settled in Chefoo.

What I do know is that I was born on the twenty-eighth of the
first month, of January, in the sixteenth year of Kuang-hsu, 1890 by
the Western calendar. We lived in an ordinary one story brick and
stone Chinese house surrounding a courtyard. As with most middle
class families at the time, we also had maids and servants. My
father also had some property that he owned. I do not know much
about his investments or financial dealings other than that he owned
some of the choicest property in the commercial section of Chefoo.
That was where the foreign consulates and foreign firms were
located. As I said we originally lived in a Chinese-style compound,
but later on — I do not know when — we moved to a place called Tung-
shan on the seashore. Our family owned it up until the communists
came, at which time, of course, they took it over. In 1978. when
I went back to China for a visit with my family, I went to Chefoo.
I asked the authorities if we could see my ancestral home. We did
not succeed. The authorities told us it was now enclosed in area
controlled by the navy, so we were not allowed even to see it.

Another thing I should mention is that my father had no
profession. He was sort of a gentleman of leisure, and he was
interested in curios as a hobby. Strangely enough, in those days
without newspapers, my father was interested in and kept informed
about national affairs. I remember faintly his telling me about the
movement of troops in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. He had
channels of communication that enabled him to know what was going on
in Tsinan and Peking.

Besides investing in some property in the commercial section of
Chefoo, my father still had some money to spare, to invest in other
ways. In those days (I learned this later) there was a form of
doing business called ling-tung. Ling means to receive, as in an
inferior receiving from a superior. Tung means east, the host, as
in Tung-tao-chu. In other words, if you had some money to invest

3

and you were not a professional, you probably would not know what to
do with your money. On the other hand, there were people, business
people, who knew a certain line of business. Specialists. They
would seek out a tung. talk it over, and ask the tung to invest a
certain amount of capital, so that he could start a business.
That's called ling-tung. The arrangement was that the tung. my
father, put up the money. The recipient would have sole authority
to do whatever he pleased with the money. My father had to just
trust him, [and] invest the money in him. He could not interfere or
have anything to do with the business. But at the end of the year,
Chinese New Year, there was an accounting. The recipient had to
render an account of profits and losses to the tung. If there was a
profit, it was divided fifty-fifty between the tung and the
recipient. If there was a loss, then the question arose as to
whether to allow the arrangement to continue or put in more money.
That was another matter which depended on another agreement.

My father invested in two such ventures. I know one of them
was a construction company. That company began to build modern
style buildings, like the Western-style storied buildings. Maybe
our new home was built by this company, but I do not know the
details. I was not home. I was then in America.

Traditional Chinese Education

The earliest thing I can remember of my childhood was when I
was four years old. I was studying with my older brother, who was
two years my senior, under a private tutor, in one of the buildings
or rooms in our compound. That is the earliest thing I can
remember. I remember that, besides the two of us, we had probably
four or five additional youngsters of our age. It was the custom
then for any family who engaged a private tutor to teach its
children to allow a few of the neighbor children to study together
with its children. That was a common, practical custom. Those four
or five were just our neighbor children. I don't remember who they
were.

Our teacher, I remember, was named Chang, [laughs] Chang. I
do not know more about him. I only remember that he sat at the desk
at one end of the room facing us, while the students would sit at
our desks facing the teacher.

Of course, what we did was start with the three character
classic, San Tzu Cbing. Now, I hardly remember it. The San Tzu
Ching was a marvelous book for the beginner. It was written in
lines of three, which was why it was called the three character

classic. "Jen chih cb'u. hs ing pen shan." That's how it went. I
cannot go on further. I used to have it memorized from A to Z, and
now I can hardly remember it. Anyway, all over China that was how
the beginners began: the San Tzu China. From there we would go to
the Pai Cbia Ching. the One Hundred Family Surnames. And then to
the Chi'en Tzu Wen, the Thousand Character Classic, we called it.
Like that. After that we came to the Four Books. And then to the
Classics.

Well, how did we learn? We did not, like in the West, sit in
our chairs at our desks and just read. We read aloud. We called it
lang-sung; that is, we read it aloud to memorize it. The teacher
would assign us each day's lesson, that is, how much to memorize.
Then, when we were ready, we would go to the teacher's desk, lay
down our book on his desk, but turn our back toward the desk. In
other words, turn our face away from the teacher, from his desk, and
recite out loud what we had memorized. That is the way we learned.
But, of course, we didn't understand what it meant. That would come
at a later stage.

We also began calligraphy. How did we begin? It was like
tracing. Sometimes you could buy printed practice sheets of the
simplest characters, characters with one or two or three strokes:
s hang, ta. jen. k'ung. i, chi. All over the country those were the
beginning characters. A student would place a piece of transparent
paper on top of the printed characters and try to trace them with
his brush. Here you call it a brush, but it is really a Chinese
pen. You would trace it, your simple word, and gradually you
removed the written character from underneath. You would then try
to imitate sbang. ta. jen. without the base. You tried to write it
yourself, but by copying the shang. ta. ien. And in that way you
advanced. You see, those characters could be written by anybody: a
teacher could do it or it could be printed. After you had gone
through the initial processes, you chose the style of calligraphy
you liked. I chose Yen, after Yen Chen-ch'ing, who was a master
calligrapher of the T'ang dynasty; that is, I imitated his writing.

After a few years, I do not know when, but sometime after I had
studied in this way at home for maybe four or five years, I changed
to another place, because my tutor would not be good enough. You
see, this kind of teacher was for the primary student. They are not
in a way good enough. Well, they were not good enough to go up to
more advanced levels, such as teaching the Classics or composition.
That kind of thing. To explain to you what they mean. So, it
happened that our family, through some introduction or connection,
was able to send me to Fushan hsien. Fushan, not Chefoo, was the
seat of the district government of Fushan hsien. In the city, there
was a private school at the home of the famous scholar, Wang I-jung,
who was then not in Fushan bsien. his home, but in Peking. His
official title was Nan Shu-fang Hsing-tso. Nan Shu- fang means the
South Study. I hate to use the word "studio." I prefer to use the

English word "study." South Study. Hsing-tso means walking.
That's a funny title. What does it mean? It meant he was employed,
or had duties to perform, at Nan Shu- fang. In other words, he was a
member of the Emperor's Secretariat, who composed the edicts, all of
those many things that issued fron the Emperor. He was one of the
secretaries who composed and advised the Emperor on such literary
matters. I will have something later to say about him during the
Boxer Rebellion.

So, I studied Classics at a private school at his residence in
Fushan hsien. You see, in China, when you went to Peking, or to
another province to be an official, or even to another province for
business, you didn't give up your ancestral residence. That was
your home, your vuan-chi. Yuan means original or primary, and chi
means residence. In other words, I am a registerd voter of San
Francisco county. That means it is my vuan-chi. His registered
residence was in Fushan hsien. Although he was absent in Peking, he
still maintained a, well, we called it a szu-shu. a private school.
It didn't mean you were opening a school for profit. You didn't get
anything. You allowed your neighbor's or friend's children to come
in to study with your children. Free! You are not supposed to
charge anything. That was the old Confucian, or Chinese, custom,
the same with our family. We didn't charge our neighbors tuition.
You are not supposed to. That would be very outrageous.

During the Wu-hsu Pien-fa. the 1898 reform movement, I was
eight or nine years old. We heard something about it though we did
not know much. But we did see pictures of, say, Kuang-hsu, Yuan
Shih-k'ai, Chang Chih-tung, and K'ang Yu-wei, somehow in Shantung.
We knew something, a little bit about what happened, but not the
details.

After the Boxer troubles, when the Hsin-ch'ou Tiao-vueh [Boxer
Protocol] was signed, probably in 1901, the court returned to Peking
from Sian. Although the Empress Dowager at one time was an arch-
conservative who misguidedly opposed rapid reform, after that
experience she was a changed lady. She was, we heard (though we had
no evidence), oriented towards reform, the West, and modernization.
There was talk of abolition of the classical national examination
system, and the introduction of Western-style schools, and so on.
Of course, in Chefoo, we just heard rumors of these things. We had
no hard evidence. We did not know the details.

Early Missionary Education; Shih-i School

My parents were rather progressive, if you may use that word.
They said, well, since Chefoo was a port, opened under the treaties

after the Opium War, ve had consuls and foreign traders. In a way,
we were in contact with the foreigners. So, my parents, looking
around, wondered what to do with the children. I have the
impression it must have been something like that. It happened that
at that time the Shih-i Hsueh-kuan. a big school, either opened or
was about to open. Sometime around then, I don't know the exact
date. I was too young to remember.

The history, as I know it, of Shih-i Hsueh-kuan was this: The
American Presbyterian mission had for a number of years run a
collegiate grade school in Tung-chou. Tung-chou was the seat of the
prefectural government, which was about er-pai li. seventy miles
from Chefoo. There they taught Western arithmetic, mathematics,
algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry, and things of that kind.
But! All in Chinese. They were translated into Chinese and taught
in Chinese.

BCG: You didn't learn English at this time?

Chang: Oh, no. You didn't need to know English. It was taught in Chinese.
And of high standard. I think they produced some of the first
teachers of modern sciences for China, but in Chinese. They were
talking Chinese.

Well, there happened to be a Reverend George Cornwell, who was
an Amherst graduate. He was a Presbyterian missionary stationed in
Chefoo. He had the idea that he wanted to teach the Chinese
English. But he could not persuade his mission to provide the money
to buy the land and buildings for classrooms and dormitories, to do
it. He could only provide the teachers of English. So, be raised
the money among the Chefoo gentry. I do not know how much he
raised, but, anyway, he did get the money and bought land and built
a schoolhouse, dormitories, and so on.

**

It was near a hill at the outskirts of Chefoo called Yu Huang
Ting. Yu Huang Ting means the Jade Emperor Peak. The Jade Emperor
was the Taoist emperor of heaven. He bought land at the foot of
that hill. The school was named the Shih-i Hsueh-kuan; that was the
official name. It had no official English name, but was popularly
known as the Temple Hill English School, [laughter] It had no
particular curriculum or course of study. It just had what the
American teacher provided, what they could teach, from the first
year primer up. What I remember was not the primer, but the
grammar. I was there from 1901 to 1907 or '8. I don't know
exactly. I was there for those years, until they could teach me no
more, [laughter]

•

I remember I learned English grammar by using the textbook,
Nesfield's English Grammar. It was written by an Englishman for
Indian students. You know, Indians.

BCG: East Indian or American Indian?

Chang: Hindu Indian. But, somehow, an American school was using English
textbooks, [laughter] I think I learned a lot from the grammar.
They had different levels of grammar: beginning, middle, and
advanced. I think I reached advanced state, but I didn't finish the
advanced, then I left. Of course, in that school we were also
taught Chinese, some Chinese, but not like in the ordinary Chinese
school for Classics. It wasn't like that. This was haphazard
Chinese. We learned how to write compositions, how to write letters
in Chinese, that sort of thing. Also, we were taught penmanship, as
well as calligraphy, [laughter] A book called Penmanship. I
remember, came from England. They were printed in England and you
had to write in them. That is what they were called. I remember
that much. That's about all I can say.

Decision To Pursue Western-Style Education

Well, when I left Shih-i in 1907 or '8, I was restless. By
that time I knew of Cambridge and Oxford. I knew the names Harvard
and Yale. I knew something about the West. I had read some things
like Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," and some Shakespeare, although I did
not know it very well. The teacher tried to explain it, tried to
make us remember some passages of Shakespeare. Things of that kind,
like Robinson Crusoe, et cetera. So, I knew something about the
West. But I became restless.

The national classical examinations had been abolished in 1905
as a system for recruiting people into the government. Had I been a
few years older that would have been my line of study. I would have
pursued that path, that is, the classical way: take the exams and be
a Chinese public official. But that road was cut off, so I tried to
find some other school to go to, because the Shib-i was not good
enough by that time. It was not advanced enough. There was nothing
to be found in or near Chefoo. I made up my mind to go to Tsinan.

to Tsinan and Tientsin, c. 1907-1908

One day I took the steamer — first time! — I took the steamer
from Chefoo to Tsingtao, and from Tsingtao I took the railroad to
Tsinan f u. That railroad was built by the Germans. Of course,
although I was young, I had feelings of outrage. Why should the
Kaiser, because of the murder of two German missionaries, demand
this concession, this right? I didn't think that was right. I knew
that. Anyway, this is neither here nor there.

When I arrived in Tsinan I went to see a family friend. You
see. in those days you stayed in an inn or with some friends. So I
stayed with a family friend by the name of Yi. He was a Cantonese,
an official in the Tsinan Foreign Affairs Bureau. Yang-wu Chu. He
had also a son about my age. The son kept me company. I said my
purpose there was to try to find some school which was advanced
enough to enter. There was none. Although the examination system
was abolished, the school system was not yet introduced or
established.

Here I want to mention that the only luggage I remember I
carried was one box of books, the books I had read and the books I
intended to read. Those were the books of the day, the newer ones.
New knowledge. 1 had no time to open my box to read them, so I left
that box in Tsinan when I left. That's the only thing I remember.
Where did it go? I don't know. I only mention that to show how
from childhood I have been interested in books.

After staying and surveying the field, and being unable to find
any appropriate school to enter, I did some site-seeing. In Tsinan
there was Ta-ming Hu [Ta-ming Lake], Pao-t'u Chuan [Fountain
Springs], and Ch'ien Fo Shan [Thousand Buddha Mountain]. We spent
some time visiting those ming-sheng. spots, then we had an idea.
Mr. Yi, the son's father, happened to know the president of the
foreign language school in Tientsin, called I-hsueh Kuan. He said
he would write us a letter asking his friend to admit us. his son
and me, as students to learn a foreign language. I said. "That's a
good ideal" So. he wrote us a letter and we started to take the
journey by land. I remember we hired two mule carts, which were
carts on two wheels driven by a mule. They could be driven by two.
or any number, but in this case there was only one. Covered sides.
Open in front. Each of us would sit inside that cubicle in the
daytime squatting. The driver with his whip, would sit outside the
covered portion, to guide the mule. The journey took five or six
days from Tsinan to Tientsin. We would start in the morning, take a
little rest at noon, and stop overnight to rest and feed the
animals, have our meals, and so on.

I also remember distinctly that on each of the carts there was
a little yellow banner (yellow means imperial), on which were
written three characters: Yang-wu Chu. Foreign Affairs Bureau. The
idea of the banner was to ward off prospective bandits, because we
were proceeding by land. In those days the highways were, I
wouldn't say infested, but you were likely to meet bad people, to be
robbed. This way they wouldn't dare to, because when they saw that
this had something to do with a Tsinan fu official, they knew that
if they robbed these people they were sure to be caught. Sure!
Otherwise, they were unlikely to be caught. That's why those
banners were valuable.

I remember also the Chin P'u Railway, the Tsientsin-Pukow
Railway groundwork was already being built. They had to build up
the earthworks, then lay the track. But the track was not yet laid.
The groundwork was being built, and we followed that. We followed
the highway.

BCG: Oh! You went on the earthworks?

Chang: We were on the regular highway. This was the railway that they were
building. They built more or less along the highway, that was the
direction. Well, I think, after five or six days, after sunset we
arrived at the last station outside Tientsin. It was called Nan-p'i
hsien. Do you know why I remember that? Nan-p'i was famous because
that was the home of Chang Chih-tung. He was then a Grand
Councillor in Peking. He was the foremost Chinese scholar,
progressive scholar of his time. I said to myself at the time,
"Well, this is the home of Chang Chih-tung."

The next day we arrived in Tientsin. We stayed in the home of
a relative of the Yi family, the two of us. So, we went to see the
president of the language school, I Hsueh-kuan (I forgot his name),
with our letter. He read it. He was very courteous. But the
answer was, "No." Why? He said that it was not the time to admit
new students. He told me that we had better come the next time they
chao-k'ao. recruit. I remember that that time was rather chilly.
It must have been sometime in the early spring in Tientsin.

I stayed a month or so, but I couldn't stay in a friend's home
just for nothing. I didn't want that, so I returned home. It must
have been by that time the end of 1908, or the beginning of 1909.
Well, I was again restless — didn't know what to do.

10

Boxer Indemnity Scholarship

I did not want to enter business. In those days Chinese
businesses were not like they are now. not so diversified. All
those simple things, I didn't want to do that. I wanted learning.
I wanted to pursue my quest for knowledge, but there was nowhere to
go. But, somehow, by happy coincidence, we received, through our
connection with Peking, some information about the Boxer
scholarship. When I received the notice, the first examination for
recruiting students under the Boxer scholarship to go to America was
already past- So« there was no hope of my going to Peking in 1909.
It was too late. The examination would again take place the next
year. So. I was looking forward and preparing for the next year.

In those days, you see, with regard to this government program
of recruiting by examination students from all over China to go to
Peking to take the exam, there was no way of knowing in advance if
you were not in Shanghai, in Canton, or Peking. They officially
announced it only in Peking. It was up to you, to anybody, to
disseminate the knowledge to the public. Every province was
eligible. The recruiting was for all, like the former national
exam. But the national exam had been practiced for centuries. They
knew when, how, and where everything was done. But in this case, we
in Shantung, we didn't have the information. It was only those in
Peking. You got it indirectly from friends or provincial officials
in Peking, then you began to know what it was all about, and how to
prepare for it. I got the information late, so that is why in 1910
I went to Peking to take part.

Shall we rest awhile?
[conversation resumed after break for tea]

Shih-i School Students Who Joined Chinese Nav}

Before I left Shih-i, a representative of the Chinese Navy
came to see George Cornwell, and asked him to recommend some of his
students to enroll in a naval school to be established in Chefoo
around that time. Of course, they approached me. I said no. I was
not interested in the navy, in fighting. No. But! Several, at
least two. I remember only two [accepted]. I remember their names.
One was Ch'en Wen-hui. One was Wen Shu-te. They were all Shantung
boys studying at Shih-i, but their standing was below me. They
enrolled. Later on they were sent by the government to London. Oh,

11

China had an insignificant navy, but when they came back they became
admirals.

The Chinese Navy historically started, I think, at the Fukien
port called Ma-wei, so the navy vas in the hands of Fukien people.
The hierarchy and the higher-ups, they were all Fukienese. These
two being Shantungese [laughter], they could become admirals of the
navy, but they could not become the leaders controlling the power.
They couldn't do that. So, Wen Shu-te later bolted. He fled his
fleet and went north and supported Chang Tso-lin. [laughter] I met
him later when Ch'en Wen-hui retired. I met him in Chefoo, where we
had dinner together, and a little talk. The last time I met him was
in Peking, when he was admiral of the Northern Fleet that bolted to
the South. He was at a dinner, the host for which was Wang Che.ng-
t'ing, the Foreign Minister. At his dinner I met him for the first
and last time after we left Chefoo. That's alii We were not close
friends, but, you see, we were youngsters together in Shih-i.
Those are what you might call my younger friends, [laughter]

Observations on the Boxer Rebellion. 1899-1900

BCG: Do you have any memories, for example, of the Boxer Rebellion in
your town?

Chang: Oh, yes. Do you want me to talk about that now?
BCG: Yes, if you can.

Chang: The Boxer Rebellion was so named because they called themselves I-ho
T'uan, or I-ho Ch'uan, which means, "Righteous and Harmonious
Brigade," or the "Righteous and Harmonious Fists." That is where
the English word "boxer" came from, the fist. Their slogan was, "Fu
Ch* ing Mieh Yang." "Uphold the Ch-ing and exterminate the
foreigners." They were what you may call patriotic people. Not
literate. Probably unemployed. Good people, but with nothing to
do. I think that it was in part a reaction to the forced lease by
the Germans of Tsingtao, by the British of Weihaiwei, and by the
French of Kwangchow wan.

Another thing, you see, those who were converted to
Christianity by the Western missionaries were usually the poor,
uneducated people. They became converts, I don't know, for various
reasons; sometimes for protection, sometimes for employment, and so
on. When they got into trouble with the people, they usually went
to their missionaries for help, and the missionaries sometimes
intervened between them and the Chinese authorities. Of course,

12

sometimes, they said, unjustly. Anyway, that was the accusation of
the rebels. For this reason there arose this rebellion, called the
Boxer Rebellion. It started in the western part of Shantung, not in
my part. But it didn't prosper, because they claimed that they were
immune to bullets, to foreign bullets. What they did was to burn
incense and invoke their various dieties for help. Then, they would
make incantations (I don't know what kind), and after a certain
period they would say, "Okay! Now! We've got it. We are immune."
But, it happened that Yuan Shih-k'ai, the governor of Shantung,
didn't believe it. Yuan Shih-k'ai took them to be rebels, bandits.
It was rumored that Yuan invited their leader to go to his yamen in
Tsinan to test him, to see whether he was immune to bullets. That
was the rumor. I don't know if it was true. And, of course, they
didn't undergo the test. They would not have been immune.

The movement moved to Chihli, and then to Peking. Well, in
Peking they found a sponsor in the person of Prince Tuan (Tuan
Wang), who introduced them into the Forbidden City, supposedly (I
don't know if they actually did it) to practice before the Empress
Dowager. So, they also got the patronage of the Empress Dowager.
Why should Prince Tuan be interested in sponsoring the Boxers? Ever
since the 1898 reform movement, when the Empress Dowager imprisoned
Kuang-hsu and took over the authority herself ( c hu i- 1 ian- 1 ' in&-
cheng). it was rumored that Kuang-hsu would be dethroned and
somebody else put there as his successor. That one was supposed to
be the son of Prince Tuan. That was Prince Tuan's motivation for
sponsoring the movement. He thought that the Boxers could
exterminate the West and uphold the Ch'ing. If that could succeed,
his son would be the next emperor. That was his motivation.

Here, it happens I have just found that I have a letter
from Wang I-jung (that is the man whose private school I attended
in Fu-shan hsien) to his niece, called Chi Ch'ing. I want to quote
from his letter to his niece. He said, "... the Purple Bamboo
Forest has been lost to the Westerners, and the Boxer brigade was
defeated. When they were defeated they just doffed their uniforms,
and returned to being peasants.... Kang Hsiang [that is the Manchu
Grand Councillor Kang-i] is still moving troops into Peking
unceasingly. Tuan Wang [Prince Tuan] spoke to people saying, 'These
are tao-men. religious sects. We cannot hold them to the strict
terms of the law.' Someone was trying to persuade Kang Hsiang to
move the Boxers outside Peking. But he said, 'If you do that how
could you still say that there were still people in Peking."1 In
other words, you should not do that. This proves that Tuan Wang was
sponsoring the Boxers. Oh, this was written the twenty-third day of
the sixth moon [July 19, 1900]. The allied army was already on
their march to Peking. That was the time before he committed
suicide.

13

Then, when the allied army reached Peking to relieve the
legations, naturally the Boxers as well as the government troops
fought and were defeated.

Meanwhile, before they entered Peking, the Empress left by the
northwest gate of Peking for Sian in a mule cart. I think something
like the one I took, [laughter] Well, she took along the imprisoned
Emperor, Kuang-hsu. When they were yet in the Forbidden City, Chen
Fei (Kuang-hsu had two concubines), Pearl concubine, she
remonstrated to the Empress Dowager, saying, "We'd better leave the
Emperor behind to negotiate with the invaders. We can't leave the
city empty." Whether that was wise or not wise is for historians to
decide. Anyway, because she was too talkative, the Empress Dowager
ordered one of the eunuchs to put her in that well. She was drowned
in that well, and that well is still there in Peking. If you visit
Peking the guide will show you that well.

Well, that is one thing. Wang I-jung, he was not in favor of
the Boxers. He never supported the Boxers. He was not responsible
for the Boxer troubles. But, he said, "When my sovereign has been
humiliated (the Empress Dowager and Emperor having had to flee the
foreign troops), I, the minister, must die." So he, his wife, and
his daughter-in-law committed suicide by drowning in their own
compound well. Their residence was Hsi-la Hu-t'ung, outside Tung
Hua Men. In one of the letters he wrote that I have, he said he
moved to Hsi-la Hu-t'ung. By telling the story of Wang I-jung I
want to show one form of Confucian loyalty, the loyalty of the ch'en
[minister] for his chun [sovereign], I want to illustrate what a
real Confucian scholar, when motivated, could do.

When the Hsin-ch'ou Tiao-vueh was concluded, the court hui
luan. the court returned to Peking. Then the Dowager Empress became
a new woman.

How about if we stop there?
BCG: I have one small question.

Chang: We can continue further if you have a question.
BCG: Was there any I-ho T'uan activity in Fushan?

Chang: No, no. As I said, it was confined to the western part, near the

Tsinan fu. Then they moved to Chihli. There was no actual activity
in Fu-shan. I never saw any Boxers. It was because Yuan Shih-k'ai
was very stern in his suppression.

14

Chang Fu-lai; Older Brother**
[Interview 2: July 26. 1983]

Chang: I would like to say something about my brothers and sister. I am
the second child of the family; I had an elder brother by the name
of Fu-lai whose courtesy name was Pu-tung. He also had assumed a
western name. Anthony, but he was popularly known as Tony. He and
I, although of different ages, went to school together; we were in
the same class. After finishing at Shih-i Academy, he got a job in
Weihaiwei. then a British naval port. Britain demanded its lease
after Germany seized Tsingtao. The British not only leased the
port, they also leased the hinterland to the harbor. Thereafter,
their administration replaced the traditional Chinese
administration.

BOG: What did your brother do?

Chang: Wait. In the old days, the magistrate of a district, now replaced
by the British, was not only the administrative officer of the
district, but also the judge, though he was, of course, assisted by
technical-legal advisors. So the peasants, the people in the leased
territory, when they had a dispute, could no longer go to the
Chinese magistrate; they had to go to the British administration. I
think they called him a Commissioner. I do not know the full title.
The Commissioner at that time was a Sir Reginald Johnston. I
suppose you know the name.

BCG: Yes.

Chang: Later he became the tutor to [Emperor] P'u-i. He was the one who
would adjudicate disputes that came to him from the local
population. My brother was employed as his. what you may call
either interpreter or secretary. He would translate what the
contestants had to say to Sir Reginald; then he in turn translated
into Chinese what Sir Johnston's decision or questions were. That
was how he was employed.

When I was in Peking in 1910. after I succeeded in the
examination for Ch'ing Hua, one day out of the blue my brother
called on me in Peking. I was surprised! Evidently he had resigned
his post in Weihaiwei. I said. "When did you come here? What did
you come here for?" He said he had just passed the customs
examination. You see, Sir Robert Hart's headquarters were located
in Peking. So he just went there and applied to take the
examination. He was duly examined and found qualified, so he was
•ent to work for the customs in Harbin.

When I went to Harvard in 1911, or maybe a little later, I got

15

a letter from my brother saying he was disappointed with the
customs, because the Chinese staff was doing the hard and dirty
work, and the Commissioner simply put his name on it. And the pay,
the pay differential was great between the Chinese and the British.
Not only that, but the Chinese staff never had any prospect of ever
becoming a Commissioner or a Deputy Commissioner of Customs.
Therefore, he had resigned.

He joined a British export-import firm in Harbin. Then in the
1920s he again resigned from that post and returned to his original
home at Chefoo. From then on, he was never employed by anybody.

I would characterize him as a sportsman, because I am of the
studious type; he was of the sporting type. He kept two or three
dogs, and he would swim in the sea in Chefoo. His dogs would swim
with him as far as he went. He also kept a horse. He also bought a
violin, and without instruction — there was no place to learn
violin — he could play any Chinese tune on that instrument. Natural
ability. And he could dabble in oil painting without instruction.
Of course, he was not very good, not very technically correct, but
in any case he did that. He was the first one in Chefoo to own a
German motor car. He was also very fluent in languages. You see,
at Shih-i Academy we bad also schoolmates from Kwangtung, Cantonese
schoolmates. Their parents came from Canton to do business in
Shantung. I never learned or even could understand Cantonese, but
my brother could speak Cantonese fluently, [laughter] He was very
good at that.

I remember years later, when I was in Shanghai, I invited him
to come down to do some sightseeing in Soochow city. After staying
two or three days, he could speak, or imitate, the Soochow dialect
perfectly. Of course, not the whole range, but he could speak some
sentences perfectly.

He also enjoyed friendships with many people, both Chinese and
foreign. He had friends among the consuls, because he could speak
English. In fact, he could speak more fluent English than I. I was
more of the studious type. I would never speak English unless I
knew I could speak it perfectly, correctly. But anyway, he was more
fluent, more ready at it, so he had a lot of foreign friends. Not
only that, he was a man of a very good heart. He would sometimes
sacrifice himself, deny himself things in order to save money to
help a friend.

Should I tell a story of what he did later on?
BCG: Sure.

Chang: In 1938 or '9, because the Japanese were fighting around Shanghai, I
was then living in Hong Kong at the Peninsula Hotel. One day I
received a letter from my brother asking me to collect a loan he

16

once made to the son of the British customs doctor, an Englishman.
He said since that son had a job in Hong Kong, he could well afford
to pay, and asked me to collect. I wrote a letter to the son, and
he replied that although he had a job, he still couldn't pay. So, I
didn't think it was wise for me to engage a lawyer to collect. I
said, "This will teach you a lesson. If you think a friend is
worthy of support, of loaning money to, you should loan the money to
him and ignore whether he would repay it. If he's worthy. If he's
not worthy, don't help him. But if you loan money to a friend and
expect him to pay back, you may lose both your money and your
friend. That's my advice."

Fu-iung: Younger Sister

I had a sister below me, the third child of the family. Since
my brother and I went to Shih-i Academy, of course my parents
wanted to have my sister educated, but there was no girls' school
anywhere to go to. But there was a convent school, a Catholic
convent school, in Chefoo, run by the Catholic church. That school
was intended not for the Chinese, but for the children of the
consuls and diplomats and foreign businessmen. However, they
admitted my sister to their school. I suppose she was the only
Chinese who ever was admitted. There she learned the piano,
English, and either French or German, I don't know which.

When I was in America, I learned that after she finished that
school, she wanted to become a nun. My father put his foot down and
said that was impossible. After that, she never married.

Some years later, I found her teaching in a Catholic school in
Tsinan fu. because there were no schools for Chinese anywhere around
Chefoo. After a few more years, she left the school and returned
home. She brought along two girls who came from poor families. She
just brought them to Chefoo as if they were her own children. She
gave them shelter, clothed them, and educated them. One of them
eventually died. Now my sister, two years my junior, is still
living in Tsingtao. One of the girls is now working in a communist
factory and at the same time keeping my sister company. May I add
something here which is not relevant to my life history, but is
about Chinese medicine? Okay?

BCG: Yes.

Chang: Two years ago, maybe two years and a half ago, my sister had a tumor
of the knee. It was swollen, infected. The Western doctors—by
West I do not mean foreigners; I mean the Chinese Western doctors —

17

diagnosed the tumor to be cancer. The recommendation was to
amputate that leg at the knee. My sister said she was already over
eighty, had not many years to live, and did not want to undergo the
operation. Somehow, a little later, she found a family who had a
secret prescription for that kind of a wound, so she took the
prescription, which consisted both of powder to be put on the wound
and herb medicine, and she is now well and sound. She can stand up
and walk, no complaints. What she complains about now is the
dimming of her sight and the hardness of hearing, that kind of
frailty, but no longer the tumor. I wrote to her and asked if that
family would sell it. I would buy the prescription, pay for it.
They wouldn't do it. Well, that happened in China. I do not know
what it was, but those are the facts. Okay, that's about all there
is to say about my sister.

Fu-hai; Younger Brother

I had a younger brother by the name of Fu-hai. He also went to
Shih-i. After he finished there, he took some capital, that is, he
was furnished with some capital by the family. He went to Dairen,
at that time under Japanese administration, and opened a silk shop.
You see, silk was not produced in the north, only in the south. In
those days, as was the custom in Chefoo, his silk shop could issue
notes, banknotes, usually in the denomination of one thousand cash,
i tiao, one thousand cash notes. The only problem is, the shop
must redeem its notes whenever presented for redemption. Once you
fail to do that, you become bankrupt, [laughs] Evidently, he over
issued and couldn't redeem the sudden onrush of customers. So
finally he had to close shop and return home. That was my thought.

I must say, my third brother was the brightest of the children.
When he was very young — at that time we already had a clock, you
know, from Europe — he could dismantle a clock and put it back
together. He was just a teenager. In view of that, I wrote to him
while he was still at Shih-i. I said it won't be a bad idea for
him to go to Peking and take the exam. At that time, Ch'ing Hua was
still holding annual examinations, but the rules are a little
different from my day. But still you could go there and take the
exam. If you are successful, I said, I would like you to go to
M. I. T., because he was so brilliant. But he never replied. He
went to Dairen and opened that shop. That's the end of him.

All right, now we'll talk about —
BOG: One question, what was your sister's name?

18

Chang: Her name is Fu-jung. We all have the Fu in the middle. That means
you are of the same generation.

Traditional Festivals

Now I'll say something about the festivals. The first festival
that comes along each year is Ch* ing Ming. Ch'ing Ming means the
pure and bright. It happens usually in the third month of the lunar
calendar, when the plants are beginning to come to life. It is not
a national holiday so much as a day of commemoration of the
departed. So on Ch' ing Ming day each family would go to their
cemetery or tomb. Some have cemeteries; some don't have cemeteries,
but their dead are buried on their own cropland. They have no
specific place enclosed as a cemetery. But anyway, each family
would go to their ancestors' tomb mound, you see, and place a square
piece of white paper on the tomb as an act of commemoration and
respect. That's all.

In my case, my father's ancestors were not buried in Chefoo.
They were buried at his ancestral home in Hsi-ch'uan hsien. I am
sure now they were all gone, but while I was still young, we, the
children, didn't have any ancestral tomb to go to to commemorate our
departed ancestors. We didn't have that.

I might also add in this connection that when a clan was
settled in a particular hsien or a village, they had a common
ancestral temple, where the member of the clan who could trace their
descent from a common ancestor paid their respects. They would have
a temple where they remembered all members of the clan according to
their different branches. I suppose my father's clan also had one
such at Hsi-ch'uan hsien. Later on, in the 1920s and '30s, I often
thought I would like to take a trip to Hsi-ch'uan hsien and find out
whether any members of our clan were still there or what happened to
them. But, because of the conditions of travel into the interior, I
never had the security, protection, I needed to do so. So, that
plan was never realized.

Now, the second national festival was called the Tuan Wu. the
fifth of the fifth moon. That was the day in commemoration of Ch'u
Yuan, who was a minister of the state of Ch'u. In protest against
his dismissal by his king, who refused to accept his advice, but
instead took the advice of some opposing party which was detrimental
to the Ch'u state, he drowned himself, I think, in Hunan province.
So the people remembered him on that day by dropping tzung-tzu into

19

the sea as an offering to his spirit. What is a tsung-tzu? tsung-
tzu is usually made of glutinous rice, no-mi, and wrapped up with a
kind of leaves, then cooked. That is tsung-tzu. On that day. all
over China people eat tsung-tzu during the festival to remember him.

The third festival would be Chung-ch' iu. Middle Autumn
Festival. I do not know the origin of that festival, but I suppose
it was probably like Thanksgiving here, that is, when the crops are
in or ripe. They tried to ch'ing-ho, to celebrate after the crops
are in. It was the fifteenth of the eighth month; that was Chung-
ch' iu. On that day all over China they ate yueh-ping, mooncakes.
The mooncake was a cake with an outer crust, inside of which there
were all sorts of ground beans and other things. The northern yueh-
ping and the Cantonese yueh-ping are different. Even the Shanghai
area yueh-ping is different. The ingredients are different. But
anyway, it's round and called the yueh-ping. [laughs]

Well, New Year. New Year is the final and you may call the
greatest of the festivals. I think on the eighth day of the
twelfth month we call la-yueh. people begin to prepare for the New
Year. And on the eighth of la-yueh, we usually eat a kind of — what
shall I call it? It's not a cake, not a food. It's kind of a
condiment called la-pa-chu. Pa means eighth. It's made of rice and
all sorts of other ingredients added into that. You can buy them
ready-made, canned, la-pa-chu.

Then the family had to begin to prepare to clothe every member
of the family with new clothes, new shoes, new hats. Everything had
to be new. So you had to buy the material and either make them at
home or have tailors make them. Also, you had to buy a lot of
groceries. I still remember, at New Year's time my family would buy
two sides of pork. We cut them up and cured them. We did not just
cook them for one day but to be used for a long time to come. We
would also save some fresh meat for the other things. We would buy
Chinese cabbage, the kind you have here. It's a big cabbage.
That's from Shantung, the big one. We would buy probably a hundred
to a hundred and fifty of those at New Year's time.

fi

We would also buy a big basket full, like that [demonstrates
with his hands], of oranges, tangerines. Because they came from the
south it was a special treat. The north didn't produce them. This
all for New Year's, which lasted from the first of January to the
fifteenth. Also on New Year's Day, at least in North China, it was
the custom to eat the chiao-tzu, which is a kind of dumpling or
ravioli made of pork and cabbage and wrapped with dough. Everyone
did that. Some people would make a lot of them and put them in an
urn, because in the north it was a little like a freezer. You could
freeze it, and just take them out and boil them as a meal. That was

20

the custom. Of course, that's not the only thing you ate. There
were other dishes that went along with the chiao-tzu.

One reason you had to buy and prepare things in such quantity
at the New Year was that the shops normally wouldn't open before the
fifteenth. It was a time for celebration. From the first of the
month to the third or even to the fifth day. it was the custom for
the friends and relatives to exchange New Year greetings by visiting
each other to offer congratulations. That was the custom.

I remember very well — I do not know the particular day, but
anyway, but it was between the first and the fifteenth of the first
month — the big business houses around the main street of Chefoo
would have a display of firecrackers. On that night we had a
servant by the name of — I still remember his name — Yueh-sheng. That
was his given name, not his surname. I forgot his surname. He
would take me along — I would sit on his shoulders, riding along
holding his head —

[interruption]

I wouldn't be able to see the firecrackers if I had to stand among
the crowd. Well, usually in front of each commercial house there
was a tripod made of bamboo, something about twenty or thirty feet
high. The string of firecrackers would hang from the top to the
bottom, and when they were lighted, they would explode, making a
great amount of noise and little sparks. After the firecrackers
were finished, they would bring out what was called a hua. Hua
means flower, but in this case it meant something made of a
substance like clay in the form of a round cylinder. The inside was
sort of like the present day rocket, you see. When it was lighted,
there was no explosion, no noise, but it shot up. The stars,
sparkles shot up. high up into the air, like a flower, like a star-
spangled tree. It was quite interesting. Then after that was
finished, my Yueh-sheng would take me home.

I also remember, one winter there was a big snowfall, and I
myself built a platform or terrace in our yard with snow. I piled
snow up until it was about as high as my breast. I also built steps
leading from the ground to the top of the terrace. Then I called
upon our servant Lao Liu, old Liu. to bring water, bucket after
bucket, from the well and pour it onto the terrace. Overnight it
was solidly frozen. Then I would go on top of it and put
firecrackers around it, just for fun. [laughter] I did that. I was
only a little boy.

I remember one New Year's all members of the family were out.
I was alone, left at home. I was feeling bored, so I went to a
shelf where we had stored our chrysanthemum pots. You know, when the
chrysanthemum withers, you cut the branches, but the roots and the
bulb are still in the pot. So I took out the pots, one by one, and

21

I threw them up into the air and let them drop and break up. I
thought that was great fun. But when my mother came home, she saw
this and was very upset, very angry. She threatened to punish me.
but after a while she cooled down, and nothing happened. Well,
years later, when I was in America, I think it was 1913, the first
time I visited New York, I went to Coney Island and found a booth
where I could pay either a quarter or half a dollar which gave me
the right to throw a missile or something at the crockery lying on a
shelf a little distance behind the counter, to see how many pieces I
could break. I do not remember if I hit any, but I did have the
pleasure of trying. Then it dawned on me, that in America they know
how to exploit your instincts for destruction, [laughter] I suppose
everybody has that instinct of destruction and takes pleasure in
fulfilling it. That was my reaction to my childhood event.

When the fifteenth of the first month came we had what was
called the Lantern Festival. It used to go on for three days, the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth of the first month. I think
Lantern Festival, according to my understanding, started in the
T*ang dynasty, when the emperor would light up the palace and have a
good time. It was called the Lantern Festival because it usually
took place in the evening at a hall of the temple of T'ien-hou, the
heavenly queen, in Chefoo. She was a sea goddess, the goddess of
the mariners. On those three days they would display all kinds of
lanterns painted with all kinds of designs. In some of the
lanterns, because of the candle burning inside (it rotated), you
could see the image of whatever was inside appearing in silhouette
outside. Everything depended on how skillfully, how beautifully you
could design your lanterns. That's all, we just showed a little
lantern at night, and that was called the Lantern Festival.

After that the New Year's festival was over, [laughter]

Shall we stop there, or we can do this next item on the
interview outline next time?

Father's Commercial Activities Continued

BOG: Okay. I have a few questions, and we can do this next time. I was
listening earlier to the tape from last week. Do you have any idea
where your father initially made his money?

Chang: No, I have no idea. You see, I was too young. I never asked that
question, so long as I was provided for. He never told us. But I
do know he had invested in those two firms. Ling-tung. I only know
that. He owned some property. How he made his money, I do not

22

know. I can't tell. You must not get the impression that we were
millionaires. In those days life was simple, and a little amount of
capital meant a great deal. It didn't mean you had millions.

Shih-i School and Christianity

BOG: Also, on the tape you neglected to say where you first learned
English. Was it at the Shih-i Academy, or elsewhere?

Chang: Yes, at Shih-i Academy.

BCD: Vas there any. for example, religious instruction at the Shih-i
Academy? Did they try to convert you to Christianity?

Chang: In those days, there were no chapel services, nothing in the school.
But on Sunday, they would recommend that you attend services. There
was a Presbyterian church in Chefoo, not for the school, but for
the district in general, which had other ministers. Cornwell was one
of the people in charge of that church. That's all. There was no
proselytizing or attempt to make you join, nothing of that kind.
That happened when I was at Harvard, my conversion to Christianity.
I joined the First Church Congregational in Cambridge. I will talk
of that when I get to Harvard. But there was no — you see. Mr.
Cornwell was not the orthodox kind of missionary who wanted you to
join the church. He never did that. He never even talked about it.
He was just trying to teach people English. He saw the need in the
future for the Chinese to know English, and that's what he did. to
provide the Chinese with an opportunity to study English. There was
no chapel service, no prayers, nothing of that kind in the school.
They only recommended that we go to church. Usually in China the
students were very obedient, because we respected our teachers.
What the teacher said went. If we could not go, there was no
penalty, no rule like that. You see. I must say. in those days,
when I went to church, the sermon was conducted in Chinese by an
American missionary, and the Bible was in the vernacular, not the
literary wen-li, but pai-hua. We were provided with the hymns and
the Bible, all in Chinese, and the preacher would preach in Chinese.
I didn't seem to understand what he was talking about. It was all
above my head. Of course, I did get some meaning; that is, I knew
they were trying to do good, but whether I could believe in what
they preached was another question. I will say more about this
subject when we come to Harvard.

BOG: You didn't convert to Christianity, but you went to church?
Chang: No. Nobody asked me to. and I didn't ask to join the church.

23

General Observations ^n Chinese History from Sino-Japanese War erf
1894-1895 to 1920s ## "

[Interview 3: August 4, 1983]

Chang: Today we are going to talk about the effects of political and

environmental events on my family and my childhood. These events
did not affect my family fortunes in any specific way, but what it
did affect was the general atmosphere of the country, and in that
way indirectly affected my thinking and also the direction I took,
the choices I made. So, in that light, I will try to give you what
I remember about the atmosphere of the time.

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Japan received her
culture, I think, from China. In fact, there was some authority who
claimed that Hsu Fu, the Chinese who was sent on a trip by Ch'in
Shih Huang to find the immortal elixer of life, or the fairy island,
really became the emperor of Japan. I have a book written by a
classmate of mine at Harvard which claims that. I don't claim that.

Anyway, Japan received much of her civilization from China,
She did not have a written language. Her history was all written in
Chinese before their reform. At Nara, during the time of the T'ang
dynasty in China, the temples were built by a Chinese monk, Fa
Chien, in the T'ang dynasty style. Things of that kind, all Chinese.

Yet, they picked a quarrel with China over Korea. Korea for
centuries had been a tributary state to China. By that I do not
mean it was a colony of China. No, China never colonized those
tributary states. I will just leave it at that. I don't want to go
any further.

Anyway, Yuan Shih-kai then was China's resident general in
Seoul, Han Ch'eng. China always supported the legitimate rulers in
Korea, as well as in Annam. China fought the French in the latter
country when the French wanted to colonize it. So China supported
the dynasty against Japanese subversion in preparation for
annexation. That's all.

I think that was the causus bellus of the Sino-Japanese War.
It was a short war, and the Pei-yang Hai-chun. the Chinese navy,
which was under the jurisdiction of Li Hung-chang, was badly
defeated. China had to cede Formosa as well as pay a huge indemnity
to Japan.

Well, that incident in a way awakened China to the necessity of
knowing how Japan did it. Japan, before her reform, was no better,
no more powerful than China. How was it that Japan did it? So that,
I think, changed the thinking of the Chinese literati, as well as

24

the common people. They wanted to know how Japan did it. And
besides, China was humiliated. China thought it was not right for
Japan to overthrow the I dynasty of Korea in order to annex that
nation.

So after the Sino- Japanese War, hundreds, if not thousands, of
Chinese scholars held degrees obtained through the classical
examinations; that is, you know, chin-shih. chu-ien. and so on. A
lot of them went to Japan to study. The reason they went in such
numbers was this: Japanese textbooks were translations of Western
textbooks and written mostly in Chinese. Chinese scholars could
learn to read the Japanese translation within a few months. That's
why so many of them went there instead of going further abroad. If
they went to America or Europe, it would take a few years instead of
a few months to be able to read.

When they returned, of course, they were not deeply educated in
my sense. They learned superficially from the Japanese. When they
came back, they tried, of course, to write about how Japan rose from
feudalism into a strong, modern power. Also, they began to establish
schools. When I was about fourteen years old and still at Shih-i
Academy, I knew several Japanese returned scholars. One was a hsiu-
tsai named Hsieh Uung-tao, who sold his land in order to raise money
to establish a school in Chefoo, called Tung-mu Kung-hsueh. Tung-mu
is the ancient name for a district. Kung-hsueh means a public
school. There was also a chu-ien. and two or three other hsiu-tsai.
I happened, you see, to have met them and known them, but I was
too young to have really associated with them. But I do still
remember, they were willing to sell their family land in order to
raise money to do this, but they had no teachers to teach,
say, modern science, or English and other modern languages, or
Western law. They didn't have the teachers. That was the trouble.
But anyway, that event, the Sino- Japanese War, awakened China to the
necessity for change.

I think the general atmosphere also led to two movements. One
movement was led by Sun Yat-sen, who blamed the court, the Ch'ing
dynasty, for all of China's weaknesses, and advocated overthrow of
an ailing dynasty as the basis for reform. That was Sun Yat-sen's
method. He was a Cantonese who studied medicine in Hong Kong. He
was by no means a Chinese scholar, so he advocated the overthrow of
the dynasty.

Probably he didn't know that the Ch'ing dynasty, although
ailing, like the British George had ruled China according to Chinese
historical precedents, culture, and statecraft. By that time, most
of the important ministers were "not Man but Han" [not Manchu but
Chinese]. So, just to overthrow the dynasty seems to have been no
remedy.

25

Another movement that grew out of this atmosphere was led by
K'ang Yu-wei. He was a scholar, a chin-shih. who in 1898 held a
minor office called chu-shih in the Ministry of Works. It was he
who memorialized the Kuang-hsu emperor to reform. But he was so
lowly that he had no right to memorialize directly the throne. He
had to find some higher official to transmit, and he found nobody,
until later on when Weng T'ung-he, the tutor of Kuang-hsu,
transmitted his memorial to the emperor. Of course, Kuang-hsu,
being young, progressive, and humiliated by China's defeat, was also
anxious for reform.

But, we must know this, there were formidable obstacles in the
way of reform. He was put on the throne as successor to the T'ung-
chih emperor not because he was in line of succession, but only
because he was the empress dowager's sister's son. He was not
second generation to T'ung-chih; rather, he was two generations
below. In other words, the empress dowager violated the law of
succession by naming this young fellow, her nephew, to be the
successor to T'ung-chih, her only son.

In protest against this violation of the law of succession, a
scholar named Wu K'o-tu went to T'ung-chih's mausoleum and committed
suicide.

I mention that to show that the empress dowager picked someone
not in line of succession to succeed her son. Evidently she wanted
to have some say in the governing of China.

Kuang-hsu became emperor when he was, I think, four years old,
in 1875. During his minority T'zu-hsi T'ai-hou, his stepmother
(chi-mu) was the regent. She really was the ruler. She exercised
imperial power, the emperor's power.

In 1889, when Kuang-hsu was eighteen, the empress dowager
returned power to Kuang-hsu and he then ruled in his own name. So
the empress dowager stopped chu i- 1 ien-t ' ing-cbeng [holding court
from behind a screen]. She stopped that.

There's another thing. Although she stopped it, I think it was
understood that for weighty matters of state, Kuang-hsu had to
consult her before he could issue an edict. She reserved that
power. Also, the empress dowager reserved the right to appoint
ministers from the second rank up. Kuang-hsu at least had to
consult her.

You see, that being so, the power structure was such that
Kuang-hsu had limited interior power to issue edicts, that is laws
governing the country.

And, after all, all the viceroys, governors, and ministers above
the second rank were all the empress dowager's men. Naturally, when

26

you are appointed by somebody, you must be loyal to that person. I
mention these things in reference to the attempted reforms.

According to normal procedure, when the reformers memorialized
Kuang-hsu about a certain matter, the emperor would refer that
particular subject to the ministry concerned for comment or
recommendation. Usually, of course, these people either delayed a
response, or their comments would be negative. They negated all
these reform proposals.

The reformers didn't have a plan for how to overcome such
difficulties. They should have had a plan for how to work these
things through to make them take effect. They didn't. So what they
did was to short-circuit the normal procedure. I think it was K'ang
Yu-wei's recommendation that the emperor appoint four cbang-ching.
Chang-china — there's no translation. It is like a private secretary
to the emperor. There were four of them, K'ang's supporters. Young
men. Chinese, "Han not Man." And these four — what shall we call
them? — private secretaries, they short-circuited the procedure which
would have referred a problem to the concerned ministry. They read
all the memorials. They helped the emperor to draft edicts, maybe
even gave advice on how to draft them. So, in 1898, in the short
time of a few months, five or six months, Kuang-hsu issued many
decrees reforming the laws, establishing a policy they called ting-
kuo-shih. that is, laying down the policy of the government, kuo-
sbih. All without consulting his stepmother.

Here is my opinion: those hotheads, those well-intentioned
reformers, I support their objectives but I disagree with their
methods. You know Lord [Robert] Butler wrote a book entitled
Politics is the Art of the Possible. In the circumstances
prevailing at that time in China, the politics that the reformers
were playing or the methods they were adopting, were not the art of
the possible. How could they expect it to succeed? An average man,
a prudent man, a man of average intelligence, how could one believe
such actions would succeed? Well, naturally all these edicts issued
by Kuang-hsu, without reference to the empress dowager, angered not
only the empress dowager, but also her supporters, the big guys.

Here is a problem I want to mention in passing. I wish some
historian would finally disentangle or verify what really happened.
It is this: the part played by Yuan Shih-kai in Kuang-hsu being
imprisoned and practically dethroned. Not dethroned in name, but in
fact. There are, I would say, three versions. One version was told
to me by my father-in-law, who was the son of Li Han-chang, once
viceroy of the two Kuang provinces. Also he was the elder brother
of Li Hung-chang, who was the viceroy of Chihli and the grand
minister of the Northern Circuit, Pei-yang ta-chen. until after the
Sino- Japanese War. This story was told by Li Hung-chang's nephew,
Li Han-chang's son, my father-in-law. The version he told me was
this: In an audience with Kuang-hsu, Yuan Shih-k'ai received the

27

command to return to Tientsin, where be trained the new troops at
Hsiao-chan, and to bring his troops to Peking to surround the Summer
Palace and isolate the empress dowager.

Well, when Yuan Shih-k'ai returned to Chihli, to his post, he
had to consider, if he carried out the order, his boss would be
Jung-lu, the Viceroy of Chihli. He was subordinate to Jung-lu, who
was not only appointed by the empress dowager, but was also her
confidant. If he just went ahead and implemented the order, I was
not sure — this is my opinion — he could get by with it, because Jung-
lu also commanded troops. He would naturally try to stop him.
There would be a fight, and Yuan Shih-k'ai, although he was carrying
out the command of the emperor, would be in rebellion against his
superior. That's one consideration. So, he decided to report the
orders he received from the emperor to his direct superior, and
naturally the superior reported that to the empress dowager. That
caused the emperor's imprisonment and what followed it. That's one
story.

I suppose this was the story current in the highest circles of
the Mandarin official hierarchy. So it is not documentary evidence,
but it was told to me by my father-in-law. Because of his position,
his relationship with these people, I thought that was the story
current in the highest circles of government.

A second version appeared in Historical Tales of the Period of.
Rule by the Pe iyang Warlords, the first volume.*

BCG: Yes, I know of it.

Chang: In this volume, I found this version of Yuan Shih-k'ai's part. In
1898, it was decided that the empress dowager would proceed to
Tientsin to review a military maneuver, vueb-ping. like what
Reagan's doing, [laughter] And Kuang-hsu, the emperor, was also
supposed to be in attendance at this review. The empress dowager
would go there in August — I mean the eighth month. This was
decided. There was a rumor, Kuang-hsu got the rumor, that at that
review the empress dowager would order the viceroy Jung-lu, her
confidant, to arrest the emperor and put up another young successor.
That was the story Kuang-hsu got.

So, he consulted these four secretaries for advice. One of
them, T'an Ssu-t'ung, I think — let me see [consults book]. Yes,
T'an Ssu-t'ung mistakenly thought Yuan was a supporter of their

*T'ao Chu-yin, Pei-yan c bun- fa t'ung-chih sbih-cb'i sbih-hua.
Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chu, 1957, v. I, p. 8

28

movement. He advised the emperor to award the title of shih-lang —
shih-lang probably means second rank — to Yuan Shih-k'ai. in order to
win his support. He himself — this is in parentheses and does not
say whether he was ordered by the emperor — in the night rashly went
to see Yuan, considering him to be a supporter, and asked him or
ordered him to proceed to Tientsin to kill Jung-lu. to kill the
viceroy. He was then to bring his troops to I-ho Yuan, the Summer
Palace, surround the palace, and imprison her. After that he
promised Yuan would become the Viceroy of Chihli. in succession to
Jung-lu. This is the version in this book.

You see. this is more detailed than the version I mentioned
before, but they don't contradict each other. That being so. Yuan
consulted his advisers. Again, he did not do what he was asked by
Tan Ssu-t'ung. He reported the plot to Jung-lu, his superior, and
that — what do you say? — spilled the soup? [laughs]

BOG: Spilled the beans!
II

Chang: Jung-lu reported the matter, of course, to the empress dowager, and
the next day Kuang-hsu was imprisoned, and the empress dowager
resumed ch'ui-lien-t' ing-cheng.

There is a third source. This book was written by Liang Ch'i-
ch'ao, the famous disciple of and supporter of K'ang Yu-wei. It's
entitled, Wu-hsu Coup d'etat. Wu-hsu means 1898. He did not name
his book reform; he named it Wu-hsu Coup d'etat. By coup d'etat, he
meant not Kuang-hsu's attempted coup d'etat, but the empress
dowager's coup d'etat. I think he means that. In this book the
author never mentioned that there was such an order from Kuang-hsu
to Yuan Shih-k'ai to bring his troops into Peking, surround the
Summer Palace and isolate the empress dowager. He didn't say that.
He said previous to that, several months before that, the empress
dowager had been contemplating taking back power from Kuang-hsu.
So, that is the version of Liang Ch'i-chao. I cannot comment on
this because I have no in-depth knowledge of the matter. I just
leave these things as they are, so that the historians can later try
to find out what was the real case.

But, whatever the real situation was, hostility toward Yuan
Shih-k'ai from members of the court was also apparent in some other
events. In 1908, I think, or 1909, when Hsuan-t'ung became emperor
at the age of three, or something like that, his father, a younger
brother of Kuang-hsu, of course, became the regent. The regent
wanted to kill Yuan Shih-k'ai to avenge his brother's having been so
badly treated by the empress dowager. That was the first or second
year of Kuang-hsu. Then, the question is. if Yuan Shih-k'ai had not
betrayed Kuang-hsu, why should his brother, the regent, want to kill
Yuan Shih-k'ai out of vengeance? If Yuan Shih-k'ai did betray the

29

emperor, what was the exact situation? You see, that is my
question.

So he wanted to kill Yuan Shih-k'ai. Yuan shih-k'ai, then, was
one of the chun-chi ta-chen. grand Councillor of State, had been
promoted from Viceroy of Chihli, Jung-lu's post, Li Hung-chang's
former post. Before doing that, he consulted Chang Chih-tung, also
a Grand Councillor of State. Chang Chih-tung, being the foremost
scholar of his day, counseled the regent that to kill a grand
minister at the beginning of a new reign did not auger well, or was
inauspicious.

Then the Prince Regent changed his order. Instead of killing
Yuan, he issued an edict or decree dismissing him, saying he
suffered from a tsu-chi. foot trouble, and was unable to walk. He
was ordered to return to his native home, Hsiang-cheng hsien. in
Honan Province, to nurse his wound, [laughs]

You see, I was only a student at that time, a young man. I did
not know much about politics, but when I read this decree, even then
as a young student, I said to myself this was not a wise move. What
the regent did to Yuan Shih-k'ai was not wise. Somehow I did not
feel it was wise to allow recriminations or revenge to take
precedence in matters of state. In politics, in statecraft, in
these big matters of state, sometimes you have to consider which is
more important. That was my view at that time.

The reason I mentioned that point was that when the revolution
broke out in 1911 at Wuhan, it was not agreed that they should revolt
at that time. But anyway, Sun Yat-sen returned home, and he was
elected by a provisional assembly representing most of the southern
provinces which declared for the republic. At first the regents
could find no one to command the troops to oppose this rebellion. I
think they found a Yin-ch'ang, a Manchu who had studied in Germany,
to command the troops. But the troops would not do their part. In
other words, would not execute his commands vigorously. So in the
face of that kind of situation, the Prince Regent resorted to
recalling Yuan Shih-k'ai from retirement. There were several stages
which were too complex to go into here.

Anyway, he finally gave Yuan full power, supreme command of the
royal forces in opposition to the rebellion. When he assumed
command, he ordered I think it was Feng Kuo-chang, one of the few
officers he had trained, to retake Hankow, and he did it very
quickly and without much trouble, to show what be could do.

Well, the revolutionaries, Sun Yat-sen having been elected
provisional president, now had to face Yuan Shih-k'aL They began
to talk, to negotiate for an armistice; not to fight it out, but
negotiate. So Yuan Shih-k'ai reported to the throne that they
wanted negotiations, that it was to use to fight, but used the

30

rebellion as a lever to force the abdication of the Heuan-t'ung
Emperor. He then appointed himself premier of the government
succeeding the monarchy. That's what he did.

In other words, the Kuomintang did not overthrow the Manchu
dynasty. They failed. It was Yuan, by again being disloyal to the
new master, that forced the abdication. Of course, in return, he
assured the personal safety of the royal family.

After that, Sun Yat-sen voluntarily resigned, gave up his
presidency and elected Yuan Shih-k'ai as the provisional president.
At the same time, they required him to appoint a responsible
cabinet. In other words, they wanted to control Yuan. Although
they elected Yuan — they couldn't fight Yuan, so they thought by
electing him president and not giving him the power, but also at the
same time making him appoint a responsible cabinet, they could
control him. In other words, it was a struggle between the
presidential form and the British cabinet form of government. Of
course. Yuan was not easily fooled into such an arrangement! [laughs]
He fought back. And that finally led to the outlawing of the
Kuomintang party, and also to the suppression of the Kuomintang
rebellion. All the southern provinces fell under the control of
Yuan.

By that what I mean to show is that, as in the case of the
reformers in 1898 who didn't have a plan for how to bring about a
peaceful reform, the case of the Kuomintang rebellion was the same
thing. There was no plan. It was a revolt by some regiment in
Wuhan that started the whole thing. Some provinces responded, and
Sun Yat-sen came back elected. No plan. They couldn't face Yuan's
opposition, you see. They ought to have known Yuan was not easy to
deal with, [laughs] They had no plan. So, again, the first attempt
failed.

After that Sun Yat-sen went to Canton and organized several
governments; none of them succeeded. Until in 1922, when he was
ousted by one of his former supporters, Ch'en Chiung-ming. He
returned at that time to the French settlement in Shanghai.

The next attempt was Sun Yat-sen's joint communique with
[Adolph] Joffe, the representative of Stalin and the Third
International, published in 1923, I think in February or March. In
that joint communique between Joffe and Sun Yat-sen, it said, China
was not ready or fit for socialism, but that Sun would accept
Stalin's military, political, and economic aid. Also, he agreed
that the Chinese Communist party, just organized in 1921. should be
incorporated into the new government. In other words, they could
concurrently be members of the Communist party and members of
Kuomintang. "K'ua-tang, " that was Sun Yat-sen's decision.

31

So, with Borodin as political head, and with Galen as the
military head, they trained the troops for the Northern Expedition.
But a division developed in the Kuomintang government before the
Pei-fa. the march northward to unify the country. When they reached
Hankow the split between the Communists and the Kuomintang came into
the open. So, Chiang Chieh-shih [Chiang Kai-shek] finally purged
the government of Communists.

Again, what I'm driving at is this, this was the second
organized attempt by the Kuomintang to unify the country by
introducing a foreign, incongruous, and incompatable party. And
that finally resulted in the Kuomintang driving out the Communists.
I just wanted to point out the significance of that.

So, now the second big attempt to unify the country had also
failed. Not only had it failed, it had resulted in Mao Tse-tung
leading the Communist party and establishing a Communist form of
government, for which Marxist doctrine had said China was not
suitable or at least not yet ready for. Mao Tse-tung was like the
founder of a dynasty. You see, in the past, although China had been
governed by aliens, like the Liao, Chin, Yuan, and Manchu, even
though they were all foreign, they came in and they governed
according to China's culture, Chinese conditions, Chinese
statecraft. Mao, a native Chinese, he became the leader of a new
government or a new dynasty, but he was using a foreign ideology,
Marxism-Leninism, to rule China. So, my point is, how long will
this dynasty last? This is the first time the leader of a political
movement has used a foreign, alien ideology, Communism, to rule
China. Will that work? Or how will that work? That's something I
cannot tell, [laughter] I just want to bring that out.

Are you interested in my saying something about how the Boxer
Indemnity scholarship administration was started?

BCG: As far as its influence on your life, that's what's most important.

Chang: Not the organization, how they did it. I think that's a most

interesting story, you see, how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
the Ministry of Education differed, and how finally they decided to
send two classes of students. Of course, I belonged to one of the
categories.

BCG: Go ahead and talk about it, as you see fit.
Chang: Okay. I won't say much about it.

32

II COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY YEARS IN CHINA AND AMERICA

Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Examination

Chang: Well, the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship was this: In 1908 or '09,
when all the American claims against damages suffered during the
Boxer Rebellion were satisfied or paid up — they were paid from the
customs revenues — I think Teddy Roosevelt decided that future re-
installments of that indemnity, which had still some forty years to
go, should be remitted to China.

**

BCG: Okay, go ahead.

Chang: And the Chinese government reciprocated by using that money to send
Chinese students to study Western learning, so that at the same time
the money would be spent in America. That was the Chinese, the
courteous response. The first set of examinations took place in
Peking in 1909. When I received information through a private
source about these examinations, as I mentioned earlier, it was too
late for me to participate in that year's examination. That was
1909.

BCG: Can you tell me what the source was? Was it a friend of your
father's?

Chang: It was from some fellow provincial official in Peking. I just got
this little reference; then I began to look into it. That is why I
decided I would take part in the next year's examination, in 1910.
Meanwhile, I had nothing to do. So I was reviewing my Chinese
classics, as well as my English literature. I still remember my
favorite English works then were Addison's Spectator and Macauley's
Historical Essays. I was also reading again Chinese classical

33

essays. I remember one which especially appealed to me was one by
Li Mi called, "Ch'en Ch'ing-piao." "Expression of Sentiment."
That's about all I can say.

I had very little knowledge of the sciences, such as physics,
mathematics, or chemistry. Very little. So I do not remember
trying to review those subjects. But I remember I tried to improve
my English and Chinese composition.

BCG: So, at Shih-i Academy they didn't teach you any sciences really, to
speak of?

Very elementary mathematics. Very elementary geometry. Very
little. And anyway, I did not think that would be important,
because I thought what was important was to have a good knowledge of
Chinese and English. Of course, at the same time, among those
competing from the Ch'ing Hua Indemnity Scholarship, I belonged to
the first category, that is, the more mature group who had some
grounding, some basic knowledge of Chinese classics. There was also
a second category favored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They
wanted to send not students of my class, but youngsters, thirteen,
fifteen years old. That category of students was not examined in
Peking. They would be examined by the Commissioner of Education of
each province and then certified and sent to Peking. But all went
to Ch'ing Hua College.

So, the examination. The examination was in two parts. In the
first part, you had to compose a Chinese essay on a subject taken
from the classics. That was one. English, same thing. They gave
you a subject, and you'd have to write an essay on that subject.
That constituted the first part.

I came out quite well. I think in that year there must have
been a few hundred people taking the examination. I don't know what
the exact number was, but there must have been a few hundred. I
came out number three on that first part.

In the second part we were examined in the sciences,
mathematics, physics, chemistry, and so on. I think I did poorly.
After the first part of the examination, there was a pang, you see.
Do you know what a pang is?

BCG:
Chang :

Pang means a placard, a piece of paper, on which were listed those
who came out first, second, third, and those who were successful.
But there was no pang to the second part. The second pang meant the
total, what was called your standard —

BCG: Among the whole group.

34

Chang: The whole thing. So there was no pang for the second part only.

The second pang included the first pang, the total. So the second
pang, when that was out. there were two categories called cheng-
ch'u, which I would call successful candidates, and the secondary
successful candidates, pei-ch'u. We were all accepted, but there
was a primary and a secondary. The primary candidate would be sent
out that very year, that very summer or autumn. The secondary
candidates would be sent out next year. But, meanwhile, we were
supposed to enter Ch'ing Hua College. Ch'ing Hua College at that
time was called Ch'ing Hua Garden, Ch'ing Hua Yuan, because it was
the garden of one of the princes. That was assigned to us as the
site of Ch'ing Hua College. Since it was a Chinese princely garden,
it had only Chinese facilities, houses. They were building new
dormitories, new classrooms, to accomodate the younger class sent
from the provinces, as well as future students like me, the older
ones.

In 1910, after I finished my examination. Ch'ing Hua Yuan was
not yet ready. It was under construction. So I had to wait until
something like March of the next year to enter Ch'ing Hua.

While I was waiting, between the summer of 1910 and the spring
of 1911, I was in Peking. At that time, as I said, it was decreed
China should become a constitutional monarchy in nine years, I think
counting from '08 or '09, though later on it was reduced to five
years. So, by 1913, China would have a full-fledged elected
parliament. But at that time, while I was waiting, the Tzu-cheng
yuan [National Assembly] was already in session. Tzu-cheng means
the Consultative Assembly, with each province represented by two
representatives, while at the provincial level there was a Ts'an-i
yuan. Ts'an-i Yuan [Provisional Parliament] also means Consultative
National Assembly, but with emphasis on discussion, as in ts'an-i.
You participate in discussion. Tzu-cheng means more than that.

Well, I got tickets because I knew one of the Shantung Tzu-
cheng Yuan. He was the president of Tung-mu Kung-hsueh. [laughs]
So I knew him. I went there. Well, the Tzu-cheng Yuan could adopt a
resolution, but it was not binding on the president, [laughs] It
was also not binding on the emperor. You could adopt resolutions,
and they would be presented to the throne by the chairman and the
vice-chairman of the Tzu-cheng yuan, but the emperor was not obliged
to adopt them.

There was one very interesting incident. One resolution
recommended that everybody cut his queue, pigtail. It was a Manchu
custom, of course. Then the emperor or his secretary pigeon-holed
it. Nevertheless, at one middle school in Peking, Honan Middle
School, some student was so daring that at night — you see, the
students at that middle school didn't agree to cut their queues —
when they were asleep, he cut all their queues, [laughs] And about
the same time, I cut my queue, without it being legal. It was not

35

legal to cut your queue, but I did it, nevertheless, in support of
that resolution. I did it.

Ch ' ing Hua College

So, by next spring, we received notice that we should enter
Ch'ing Hua College, go there and reside there.

BCG: This was the spring of 1911?

Chang: Nineteen eleven. I think it was March. When we entered there the
secondary candidates, we numbered between sixty and seventy, I
think. At that time we lived in the Kung-tsu t'ing, in the Chinese
section, that is, the old buildings, the buildings which were built
by the old owner, the Ch'ing Hua Yuan. The new buildings were for
the youngsters and the classrooms, as well as for the American
teachers. By that time, the American teachers which the Chinese
government hired had already arrived. I do not know the number; it
must have been around twenty. And a great many of them were women.
They impressed me as being high school teachers, not college
teachers. There was, of course, a medical doctor, a missionary
man. There was also a Ph.D. teaching English. He was from
Columbia. All the rest, I think, had only A.B. degrees.

The dean of the college was a man by the name of Hu Tun-fu, a
Cornell graduate who was well versed in mathematics. He adopted the
unit system; that is, this course counts as one unit, that counts as
two, and so on. Although we belonged to the same class of
candidates, we did not take the same subjects. We took maybe higher
or lower algebra, maybe advanced geometry or elementary, according
to our own choice. And so on.

BCG: You could choose the classes you wanted to take, or were there
requirements?

Chang: No requirements. You see? Harvard was the first American college
to adopt the unit system, and Hu was adapting this advanced system
to a high school grade college. That aroused a great deal of
opposition, both among the American teachers and among the students.
Nobody liked it. So, by the end of the term when June came, he had
to resign, [laughs]

We were lodged in the lower building, and our dining room was
separate from the other youngsters. It was tuition free and board
free. There were other incidental expenses we had to pay, but for
board and lodging, it was free.

36

BCG: How many of the more mature students were there?
Chang: Between sixty and seventy.
BCG: Of the older students.

Chang: Yes, that pang, those secondary candidates. Should I add something
else? Is that all about the curriculum?

BCG: Did you engage in any political activity?

Chang: Mo. You see, in theses days we had no student organizations like

sports or debating. Now we have them, but in those elementary days
we were just beginning to disentangle what courses we were going to
take and what college we were going to go to in America. Mo.

BCG: How long were you at Ch'ing Hua?

Chang: About three months. You see, by June we had to go home and prepare
to go abroad. There was not much time.

BCG: So you were there for only a brief time.

Chang: Only a brief time, 1911. I entered in March, because we were

waiting for the building to be ready, and left only about three
months later.

I want to say something about why I entered Harvard. Should I
say something here?

BCG: Sure.

Chang: I had a teacher by the name of Florence Henniker. She was a

Wellesley graduate. She taught me English. Knowing that I was
going to America, at her own initiative, she said, "Go to Yale,"
because she had a cousin who was a professor there, and be could
look after me. Oh, I was very grateful, very appreciative. Of
course, I had heard about Oxford and Cambridge and Yale and Harvard,
but I did not quite know the difference between Harvard and Yale. I
only knew these were two of the oldest and best, like Oxford and
Cambridge. But when I went to say goodbye to my chemistry teacher,
who was a Cornell man by the name of Eaton, the first question he
asked me was, "What college have you decided to enter?" I said
Yale. He said, "Why Yale?" [in a stern voice] I told him why. I
didn't give any reason, just that someone recommended somebody to
look after me. He said, "If you want to be a football player, go to
Yale. If you want to be a scholar, go to Harvard." Well, being a
Chinese, my object for going to America was to acquire Western
learning. I was not interested in football, [laughs] So,
naturally, I changed my mind.

37

But, I said to myself, how was I to face my English teacher?
How could I be so ungrateful? You see, that's a Chinese conscience:
your etiquette has to be absolutely correct; you cannot just
abruptly make changes. I thought it over. I finally had to inform
her. Of course, she had nothing to say. It was nothing binding.
It was just her good intention. I thanked her for her good
intention, for all her guidance, and so on, but I said I wanted to
be a scholar.

Later on she returned home. Her home was Seattle, Washington.
So, when I finished Harvard Law School, I purposefully chose to go
back by way of Seattle to catch a steamer in order to see her. We
were in correspondence, so I knew her address. So I called on her;
she did not remember that incident, [laughs] She was still a very
kind person. I think her family owned some real estate. She asked
one of her staff of the family business to take me around in an
automobile, not hired, just take me around. Then she accompanied me
to see her grandfather. I think her grandfather's name was Denny.
He was the first white settler of Seattle. I thought we had made
up, because I wanted to pay this courtesy to show her that although
I went to Harvard, I did not forget her. I still remember her
graciously.

After the term ended we had to take an examination to eliminate
those who were not ready, those who were unfit. That was a school
examination, not a recruiting examination. I had to sign a bond to
the government, which had to be co-signed by two fellow provincial
officials, promising the government would give us seven years — we
could spend seven years as a maximum — we need not go that long, but
we could spend seven years in America, and go to whatever college we
chose. The government did not make any restriction. We could study
whatever subject we chose. And on return, we were pledged to serve
the government. The government did not promise to give us jobs!
But we had the obligation, if they wanted us, to serve the
government. That's all. I signed such a bond.

Then, before going home to our respective homes and provinces,
we had to say farewell to, first, the minister of education. It was
headed by Chang Chih-tung when I took the exam. But by that time he
was grand councillor chun-chi ta-chen. The shang-shu was another
person, T'ang Ching-t'ung. We were in there to bid goodbye to the
high officials. The shang-shu, the minister, did not talk. The
shih-lang, one of the vice-ministers, did talk. His name was Pao
Hsi. He was a Manchu scholar. I remember what he said; he said
when you go abroad for a number of years, don't forget your
classics. You should take along your classics and occasionally
review them. That's all he said.

After that we went to the Wai-chiao Pu, at that time called
Wai-wu pu. The shang-shu was Tsou Chia-lai. He said only five
words, "Go quickly, come back quickly." [laughter] It was very

38

funny to me. but I knew what he meant. I think what he meant was go
quickly to acquire Western learning, and come back quickly to your
country, which needs you. That's what I took him to mean.

Preparing ^o Go Abroad ^o

From then we went our separate ways, to our homes, to say
goodbye to our family in the different provinces. We were to
assemble in August in Shanghai for the trip abroad. Is that in
order?

BOG: Yes. What did you do while you were at home?

Chang: Nothing. Only a short while at home. You see. the reason for this
period was to allow students enough time to get home before they
went to Shanghai. I only had to go to Chefoo by steamer, overnight
or two days. Some of them had to go far away, you know. It may
have taken some time. I don't know. That's the reason. They are
allowed to have flexibility.

When we were in Shanghai we had to change over from the Chinese
style to the Western style clothing, [laughter] 1 told you already
about this?

BOG: No.

Chang: We had to change over. Okay, here is something I will say about the
changeover. The hardest part of the Western style was how to put on
in hot summer a hard collar and tie the tie. That was the hardest —
I had to try again and again to do it.

Anyway, we were advised by our advisors to go to a particular
tailor. Chinese tailor, to measure and order our suits.

BOG: This was in Shanghai.

Chang: I think the name was Yung-chang-hsiang. That tailor shop was in

existence until the Communists came. It was quite well known. But
when those suits were ready, I thought somehow the style did not fit
or suit my artistic taste. Big shoulders, wide trousers, tapered in
towards the middle. It was the style of the Midwest, of Wisconsin
or Illinois, of the West. Anyway. I didn't know the difference,
but that style did not appeal to me. I said that's ugly. So. I
went myself — I spent my own money — to a shop on Szechuan Lu and
ordered a blue suit, a suit of blue serge, more or less in the
English style. Somehow. I favored that style. And when I arrived

39

at Harvard, that was the only suit that I could wear. The other
suit I took to a man called Max Keesser, a Jewish dealer in old
things. I said, "How much will you pay?" Two dollars." "I'll
take it." [laughter] So there was Max Keesser. He was well known
in Harvard Square. Two dollars. I gave it away, [laughs]

Then they gave a reception for us. the commissioner of customs,
an American by the name of [Henry Ferdinand] Merrill. He was a
Harvard graduate, with seniority. He and the director of the
telegraph, a man by the name of Tang Lu-yuan, hosted a reception
for us. Tang Lu-yuan was one of those Chinese youngsters sent over
to America in the 1870s — do you know that?

BOG: Yes.

Chang: — who did not finish their education and were recalled. They were
headquartered at Hartford, Connecticut. He was one of them. Well,
then we were given two escorts by the name of Tan and Chupg. They
spoke just a little English. That's all they knew, very little
English. So we boarded the S. S. Persia, a steamer, for San
Francisco. Arriving — Would you like to know about an incident
aboard the steamer?

BCG: Sure.

to America

Chang: You see, we were for the first time faced with Western chow.

Oh, there were a lot of choices. One evening I chose Welsh rarebit.
I said what's that? I'll try it. Well, when it came, I wouldn't
take it. It's cheesel It was cheese! Even after that experience,
I have never voluntarily taken cheese to this day. Once in
Cambridge I was invited by a lady to a Sunday dinner. (In New
England, a Sunday dinner somehow was given at lunch.) She served
nothing but Welsh rarebitl [laughter] By that time I could
reluctantly, mien-ch'ang, I would take some. I took some. [There
was] nothing else I But after that she asked me. "How do you like
it?" I said, "Very much." It's courtesy, you see. It's English —

40

General Observations on Students Who Were Sent Abroadfffl

Chang: Here I would like to comment on the young students and the older
students. Would you like a comment here?

BOG: Perhaps the Harvard University part we should leave until next week.

Chang: That has to do with Ch1 ing Hua.

BOG: Okay. Anything before that we'll do.

Chang: You see. the reason why they wanted to recruit two classes of

students was that the Wai-wu pu wanted to recruit only youngsters.
They wanted teenagers about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, to send to
America so they would learn American ways, not just get a college
education, and so on. Family life, the social life, that's what
they wanted. Chang Chih-tung, at that time shang-shu of the Hsueh
pu of the Ministry of Education, disagreed. He said such students,
when they returned, would not know China. They would only know
America, American ways. They would be less useful to China. What
he wanted was to send some people older than teenagers, who already
had some foundation in Chinese classics, so that when they returned
they would be more useful to China, coupled with their Western
education. I supported his policy. That's how there came to be the
first category, t i- i-ko, and the second category, the youngsters.
That is why they built Ch'ing Hua for those youngsters. They had to
stay in Ch'ing Hua for several years before they were sent out.
They couldn't be sent out at that time, you know. In the 1870s they
sent out I don't know how many batches, probably three or four
batches. Probably only two or three graduated from college. All of
them were just not even high school graduates. But they were all
Americanized. They cut their queues. They danced. They joined
churches. They forgot the Chinese. That is why they were recalled.
It is a great sadness; if those people were allowed to finish their
education, at least to the college level, if not the doctoral level,
they would have rendered a much greater service to China. And not
only that, they would have accelerated Chinese modernization.

China's reform did not begin with 1898. China sent those
students abroad, China had built a navy, bought British war navy
vessels. China established the Chiang-nan Chih-tsao Ch'ang
[Kiangnan Arsenal], the engineering works in Shanghai. There was a
naval college in Ma-wei. There was a medical college in Tientsin
established by Li Hung-chang. In those colleges they all had
foreign instructors. So China's modernization, China's reform, did
not begin with K'ang Yu-wei's reform and the consent of the emperor.
They were initiated by the provinces. They were managed, conducted
by the viceroys or the governors like that. Yuan Shin-k'ai
established the Pei-yang Fa-hsueh. for example, and sent people to
Harvard, to Pennsylvania, and so on.

41

So the reform movement didn't start with K'ang Yu-wei. If
K'ang Yu-wei had somehow tried, like those viceroys — but he was
nothing. He was a chu-shih. That's the trouble, you know. If he
could have found a patron, like Li Hung-chang or Chang Chih-tung, he
could have probably succeeded. But he didn't find a good patron.
He wanted to do it himself, just words. And he finally misled his
emperor. The emperor, you can't blame him. His education was
Chinese classical. He didn't know all the new things. If K'ang Yu-
wei had found somebody of his day to sponsor this thing, I think he
could very well have succeeded. That's, again, one of my
observations.

BOG: Perhaps you're right.
Chang: How about we stop there?
BOG: Okay.

Boxer Indemnity Examination^///
[Interview A: August 9. 1983]

Chang: In 1909 the first batch of the older students were recruited, and

they were sent to the United States before I could go there in time
to take part. But anyway, all this management, the implementation
of this program, was done by what was called in Chinese Yu-mei-
hsueh-wu chu [Bureau for Study in America]. The government
established this Yu-mei-hsueh-wu chu to handle the program for
sending students to America under the Boxer Indemnity.

There was a tsung-pan, general director, who represented the
Wai-wu pu [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. Then, under him there were
two hui-pan, what you may call assistant directors, one representing
the Wai-wu pu, one the Hsueh pu. That was the structure. They held
all the examinations and issued the exam subjects. They managed all
those things.

When I arrived, I had to go there to apply for permission to
participate. There were hardly any requirements. China was very
liberal, very democratic in that sense. It was in a way modeled on
the classical examinations. There were no qualifications, such as
you must be a high school graduate or this or that, because in those
days China didn' t have any schools, except the missionary schools
and private academies. So there was no educational qualification or
requirement for registration.

42

Chang: But anyway, the only limitation was the old one. The applicant
must be from a family which was shen-chia-ch'ing-pai; his family
must be "pure and white." By that it means anybody. No
discrimination against anybody except actors, prostitutes, and
criminals was allowed. You see, Reagan wouldn't have qualified,
[laughter] If the applicant himself was a criminal or his family
had a member who committed a crime or who was an actor or a
prostitute, then that person was not qualified. That was the only
limitation. So. of course, I qualified. I'm from a family which is
ch'ing-pai, pure and white.

Then, of course. I learned after application when and where the
examination would take place. That's all.

BOG: Do you remember how the exam was given?

Chang: Let's see. It was given at a big hall. I forgot the name of the
hall. Probably it's called Chin-shin kuan. Chin-shin kuan was
formerly the academy for the chin-shih [doctoral degree holders].
Later on the Chin-shih kuan was the site of the Chiao-tung Ta-hsueh
[Communications University], of which I was for a time president.
That was the hall, the big hall. You see. when we went there we
were given the subjects for the composition and where we had to
answer the question about the sciences. That's all.

BCG: You just sat at desks?

Chang: Yes. Each one had a little desk.

BCG: It wasn't, say, like the old-style examinations?

Chang: No. you were not confined to live there during the whole period.

This was more modern, [laughs] Not so strict. Because, after all,
this was only for going abroad to learn. The examination to test
your ability was different, you see, than the classical examination.
Any other questions?

BCG: No, I don't think I have any at this point. Do you want to move
onto the voyage across?

Incident of the Lost Fan

Chang: I'd like to say something first in commemoration of my lost fan.

When I was proceeding from my hotel to the examination hall, I hired
a rickshaw. That was the normal way of transportation in those
days. Rickshaw in Chinese is jen-li ch'e, which means man-powered

A3

vehicle. It came from Japan. We had sometimes called it tung-yang
ch'e. Japanese vehicle. When I alighted from the rickshaw, I took
out money to pay the driver. After that I picked up my things. You
know, you had to take along your own ink — I don't know how you call
it in English — ink, pen, and so on. When I arrived at the
examination hall, I discovered my fan was no longer with me. Well,
I thought it over. Most likely I had left it on the rickshaw while
I was paying the driver and it could not be recovered. No use to go
after it.

To this day I remember that fan, for this reason: there are all
kinds of fans in China. Anybody can have a fan. But there's a
difference between a gentleman's fans and the ordinary man's fan.
An ordinary man's fan, it can be bought. That fan can have painting
or calligraphy on it, but it's already painted or block printed, and
usually not done by a scholar painter or scholar calligrapher. It
would be by some artisan, you know, people not well versed in those
things. Although I had had fans before that, that fan was the first
fan which was painted on one side by a local painter by the name of
Li Peng-feL And on the other side the calligraphy was written by a
scholar by the name of Ch'en Chi-yun. He was a chu- j en, the one who
was the president of Tung-mu Kung-hsueh, that I mentioned earlier was
in Chefoo. He did that. They were not nationally known
calligraphers or painters, but they were locally prominent. So that
was the first fan I had of that kind. And in those days, you could
not buy calligraphy or painting from a scholar or from a gentleman
painter or calligrapher. The custom was you had to know him, or
know him through a mutual friend. Then they would do it for you for
free, gratis. That was the custom. Once they charge you, they
become an artisan, commercialized, which was not dignified. So that
is the reason I prized it so much.

Now I have a collection of fans, over one hundred, and the
calligraphy on my fans represents practically all the known
wan- Ch1 ing (late Ch'ing) calligraphers and painters. Maybe my lost
fan gave me the motivation to recompense for its loss and collect
these fans. Maybe, I don't know, but anyway I have a collection
now.

BOG: I'd like to see it sometime.

Chang: Okay. That is in memory of my lost fan. [laughs]

Touring California and Trip to Harvard

Now we can go on and pick up with the trip to San Francisco. I
think we arrived at the beginning of September. Of course, we were

44

welcomed by the Chinese consul-general, to whom I had a letter of
introduction. The Chinese consul-general appointed an M.I.T. man by
the name of Hsieh Tso-k'ai to escort us around, to sightsee. Of
course, all the business part was done by our two guides, two
escorts. MEETS. Chung and T'an. But the sightseeing part was
conducted by Hsieh Tso-k'ai. The only thing I remember about that
trip was we went to a forest and there was a big tree, probably a
redwood tree, so huge that there was a hole cut through it. and you
could drive a car through it. I had a picture of that tree and our
bus. but that picture was lost when I left China. I can no longer
locate it. But that is the only thing I can remember about that
trip.

We did not come into contact with any Americans. Of course. I
visited Chinatown. They had a mini-department store, and I think I
bought a new suitcase, because when 1 came from Shanghai I didn't
have any suitcase. All we had were trunks. So I bought a suitcase,
and that suitcase lasted me very, very many years, [laughs]

Then we boarded the transcontinental train with Pullman cars on
our way to our destination, to our colleges. You ask me about my
first impressions and experiences in the United States. Well. 1 do
not know which night it was. It was not a pleasant experience, this
first experience. When I went to my Pullman for the night. I
usually hung up my coat inside the Pullman, but I took out my wallet
and placed it under my pillow. Somehow that was my habit. 1 had no
intention to do it as a precaution or anything. I just put it under
my pillow. Well. I had only $20 in cash in bills. $10 bills, in the
wallet. When I washed and so on the next morning, I went back to my
Pullman to dress up. I picked up my wallet; the $20 bill was gone.
So I asked the porter, who was black, whether he had seen it. Of
course, he said no. That was the end of it. I did not think it
worthwhile enough to report it, because I knew nothing could
happen — it was a small sum. My Confucian culture told me to stop
there, and 1 stopped there. That was my first experience in
America, [laughs] You think that's all right?

BOG: Oh, yes. Typical of America.

Chang: Then as the train rolled eastward, my classmates, one by one. they
dropped off at some stations on the way. Most of them went to such
universities as Wisconsin. Purdue. Michigan, Illinois, western state
universities, because most of them were interested in engineering,
and so on. And besides. I understood the expenses and tuition there
were much lower than in the East. So by the time our train reached
Boston there were only three of us: Hsien Wu. K'ang Wu, and myself.
Hsien Wu went to M.I.T. K'ang Wu and I went to Harvard. I think I
should continue here to say something about how we were registered.

45

Undergraduate Years at Harvard

The government as I mentioned earlier did not choose our
universities. It was entirely done by ourselves. And the
government didn't help us, giving us a letter of introduction or in
some official way help us to apply. It was left to our own devices.
So K'ang Wu and I went to Cambridge. Directly we went to University
Hall to call upon the secretary of Harvard College. The regular
secretary was a man by the name of Hart, who was at that time on
vacation. So, the acting secretary was a man by the name of Welles.
(I don't remember his first name.) We just said we came from Ch'ing
Hua College and we wanted to apply for admission to Harvard. Then
he took down our request and said the matter would have to be taken
up by an admission committee. We got the impression there would be
no problem. So, in a few days we received a letter saying that we
were admitted, just as easy as that. But we were admitted not as
freshmen but as unclassified, which was a title that was given to
all transfer students, American as well. If an American student
wanted to transfer from Yale or any college to Harvard, and he
finished his freshman year at Yale, he wouldn't be admitted as a
sophomore to Harvard. That doesn't mean Harvard downgraded Yale.
It just meant, well, we don't know how good you are. We'll admit
you as unclassified. We'll see how well you can perform. Then
we'll classify you. On that basis I was admitted.

The next year I became a junior. Because I only spent the
first year there as unclassified, they must have thought I was good
enough. Anyway, I spent three years at Harvard and graduated cum
laude.

Every freshman had to take English A, because Harvard didn't
trust the English proficiency of not only the public schools, but
even the boarding school graduates. Most of Harvard's freshman came
from boarding schools in New England. Anyway, although I was not
called a freshman, I took English A. In English A, even though I
passed it, I had a grievance. That was my only grievance against
Harvard. Of course, that grievance was so insignificant,
infinitesimal when compared with the educational opportunity that
Harvard gave me, but I would like to mention it. It was like this.
The freshman course was given by one or two professors, but the
students were divided into sections. Each section was assigned an
instructor. The professor could not possibly teach several hundred
newcomers. The instructor of my section was a man by the name of
Moore. He was a candidate for a Ph.D. in English. Every time I
used the word "towards," he would mark on my paper "error." As I
was so used to using "towards" instead of "toward," sometimes I'd
make a slip. And again he marked it an error. I was so incensed
that I thought of going to the dean or the professor to challenge
him. Again, my Confucian sense of courtesy told me don't do it,

46

it's no use. No use. Even if I won. what would I achieve?
Nothingl So I stopped. But up to today I remember that point. I
said not Harvard failed me. but Moore failed me. Probably he was
teaching me American English instead of English English.

I also have something to tell at the other extreme. Should I
say it now or later on? About another professor of English.

BOG: If you're thinking about it now. go ahead and talk about it now.

Chang: Years later, when I came here in 1943. I went down to Cambridge and
I met my old professor, Maynadiere. He taught me advanced English
composition while in college. When I called on him in 1944. he was
happy to see me. Although it was morning, or forenoon, he brought
out some wine. So we were sippng wine and chatting. He asked me
about what I was doing in China, and so on, and about other of his
students. Well, he quizzed me. He asked me what was the meaning of
"presently." I promptly answered. "It means shortly." Oh, he was
elated! He shook my hand. He said. "You are wonderful." He said.
"You know, now even well established writers in America use that
word not to mean shortly, but to mean currently." Well, when I
looked up the word in the Oxford dictionary — I had been using the
Oxford dictionary in preference to Webster's ever since I was at
Harvard College — it said, now. in the present day. that word in
American usage means "currently," but English usage still means
"shortly." In other words, currently, that has become American
usage through wrong usage, probably, [laughs] I want to say that to
show that at Harvard you had these two extremes. On one. they
taught me pure English. The other probably was less than pure
English, [laughs]

Okay, that finished that. From there shall we go to the
curriculum? We'll go on with this?

BOG: Okay. I have a question. Before you registered at Harvard, they
knew nothing of your coming?

Chang: No. nothing. We arrive one day. Overnight, next morning, it was
our office to register. That was our mission. So. the next
morning, we just took the subway, went over to Harvard Square, and
registered. No preparation, no introductions, no official document
to prove who we were. We told him we were from Ch'ing Hua Indemnity
Scholarship, and they took our word.

BOG: No papers at all?

Chang: No. no. Another thing, in those days, you see. you had to know

an ancient language, either Greek or Latin, inorder to get the A.B.
degree when you graduate. Otherwise, you graduated with S.B.,
Bachelor of Science, instead of Bachelor of Arts. They gave Chinese
the standing of an ancient language. But now it is modern. One of

47

the five languages at the U.N. In those days, they gave us credit
for our Chinese, and they never tested us. Nobody could test us!
So we were given credit for our knowledge of Chinese. That's why I
graduated A.B. instead of S.B. Then I took German as my second
language. That's all that was required.

BOG: How did you pay the tuition?

Chang: This way. When we came, the regulation was that we were given a
stipend of eighty American dollars a month, issued by a Chinese
chien-tu. supervisor of students in Washington. That was the
office. He sent us a check for eighty dollars a month. That was
all they gave us. All the rest was up to you. If it was not
enough, you had to get a supplement from your home in China. If it
was more than enough, as it was for those who stayed in the West and
the Middle West, they could spend it any way they wanted. So I got
eighty dollars. But after a short while, because of the disparity
in the tuition required by the different universities, the policy
changed. You see, the state universities were not so much. At
Harvard at that time, tuition was the highest. It was two hundred
for the whole academic year.

H

Later on the government would pay directly to the different
universities where we were any amount of tuition they charged, as
well as some incidental points, such as the union fee. I belonged
to Harvard Union. It was something like five or ten dollars a year,
and that the government, the supervisor, paid direct. All the rest,
lodging and food and incidentals, we paid out of the sixty dollars
we got.

BOG: Later on it was dropped to sixty dollars?

Chang: I found sixty dollars was meager, but it was adequate. But we did
not have the privilege of any luxuries: going to the opera, or
something like that. But I did manage to go to some of the shows,
not the movie show, once or twice a year. It was adequate. And not
only that, I had my suits made to order at Harvard Coop. It cost
sixty dollars. Sometimes I did that. So it was adequate if you
could dispense with entertainment, luxuries. That's why you could
not entertain, have a large circle of friends. You see, if you had
a large circle of friends, you had sometimes to entertain. That's
why we were restricted in that sense. Another question?

BOG: When they changed the rule so that the government paid tuition
directly, did that in any way change — ?

Chang: The student distribution?

BOG:

Yes, so that —

48

Chang: No, no.

BOG: Students still went to the Midwest?

Chang: Yes. I think they still stayed in the West, because they were

interested in engineering, most of them. I was not in engineering.

Student Life at Harvard and Chinese Student Alliance

Chang: At that time, there were still about ten. or less than ten. Chinese
students when I arrived. Those few Chinese students — a few
graduated before I arrived — were all sent here from Pei-yang
University. That university, I think, was established by Yuan Shih-
k'ai, and it lasted until my return to China. Later on it became
not a general university but a law school, mostly staffed by Harvard
law graduates. And it was then incorporated into Peking University
Law Department.

The Chinese government appointed a man by the name of Drew to
watch over us. He was a Harvard man who had retired from the
Chinese Customs Service. He was appointed supervisor of not only
those students at Harvard, but a few others at Pennsylvania and
probably at Columbia. So there were Chinese students already there.
When I arrived, 1 didn't have to look for assistance to find lodging
and to know something about the university life, and so on. The
students there readily offered their help as guides and helped me
to find a place to live and told me things about Harvard.

In my day, there was a Chinese Student dub at Harvard; not
only at Harvard, at every university in America, East, West, and
Middle West, when there are more than two or three students. I
believe the Harvard Chinese Student Club was the first coeducational
club, [laughs]

BOG:

Men and women?

Chang: Men and women. What do you call it?
BOG: Coeducational.

Chang: Yes, coeducational. Because although Harvard didn't have any girls.
Radcliffe did. We had a student at first by the name of Niu Hui-
chu, from Radcliffe. which then we called the Harvard Annex,
[laughs] We admitted her to our club.

49

By the way, she was the daughter of one of those nineteenth
century, 1870s, young students. Her father was one of those younger
students who didn't graduate from any college. I think she was of
Cantonese ancestry. Her father was a Cantonese.

We usually met once a week, the club. We talked about, well,
nothing important, just had some refreshments, talked about the club
affairs and the student affairs. Nothing important. Usually this
meeting took place in one of the members' dormitories or at Philips
Brooks, because at Philips Brooks the room was free.

Then the Chinese student body in America was organized into the
Chinese Student Alliance. The alliance consisted of three
divisions, the Eastern division, the Middle-Western division, and
the Western division. The three divisions would then elect a
president. I think in the year before I left America, I was elected
president of the Chinese Student Alliance. Each division or section
held a summer conference, usually at one of the colleges. For
instance, I attended the Eastern section alliance conference the
first year at Williams College. The second year, Cornell, at
Ithaca. Third year, at Phillips Andover Academy. Fourth year, at
Brown, and so on.

•

BCG: Which years were these?

Chang: The first one I attended was Williams, in 1912. The second one was
1913, in Ithaca. The following year was Andover, in 1914. The
following year, Brown, in Rhode Island. Each section every year
chose its chairman of that section. Also, the whole alliance
published a monthly called China Students' Monthly, in English.
Somehow, I don't know when, it stopped publication. But I think you
can still find it in some of the libraries.

I haven't talked about my experiences in the United States,
have I? I haven't finished yet. I only talked about that one
story. How shall I go about that? When should I pick up that?

BCG: If you want, now.

Representing the Chinese Student Alliance in the Lin Case

Chang: About the Chinese Student Alliance, there is one event I would like
to relate. There was a Chinese student by the name of Lin. I think
he was Cantonese. He was one of those Pei-yang students. He
attended Maine State University. While there he committed a crime
and was imprisoned. I forgot the year in which the Chinese Student

50

Alliance somehow elected me to undertake the task of trying to get a
pardon for him, for this Lin. I suppose the reason they elected me
was that 1 was a law student. Of course, it didn't take a lawyer to
do it, but somehow they elected me anyway.

First, the crime. While he was a student at Maine State
University, he dated an American girl, and the girl promised to
attend a dance on a certain date with him. That girl failed to keep
the date, so he ambushed her and shot at her. He did not kill her,
nor was she seriously injured. I do not remember the details.
Anyway, he did try to shoot her. For that he was sentenced to
fifteen years in prison. At the time I was trying to get him a
pardon, he had already served, I think, about eight years, half of
the sentence. So I went to Augusta, the capital of Maine, and
petitioned the governor for a pardon, in writing, of course. Then
the government set a date for a hearing to hear my argument, and I
had to appear before the governor's counsel, not him alone, to
present my case. Before that, I went to the prison and interviewed
Lin. I told him what the student body wanted to do, to get a pardon
and get him out of the country. I said, "You are a shame to the
Chinese student body. We want to get you home. Are you willing to
do it?" He signed a letter saying he was willing to go home if he
was pardoned.

Then I found out from the husband of that girl — she later
married this American boy — that they had no objection to my
petitioning for a pardon, as long as, after the pardon, Lin would be
sent home. They had no objection. I also at one point interviewed
the girl. With that knowledge, I appeared before the governor's
counsel to present my case. I remember they sat, the governor and
all his councilmen, on a dais; you know, up. I was standing in
front of them, at the lower level, no seat, [laughter] It was very
simple; I said, "This student is a disgrace to China and the Chinese
student body, and it is a thorn in our side. I would like very much
to have him removed from American soil and sent home, so we can blot
out this shameful incident, and that will promote better relations
between the Chinese student body and the American public." I said
it was a crime, that it was done, and that it could not be undone.
That's all I said.

After deliberation, the pardon was granted. But, with one
condition. That is, he must leave not only Maine but the United
States. Why? Because after he left Maine, the Maine authorities
would have no more jurisdiction over him. If he stopped in
California, they could do nothing. They probably could extradite, I
think, but anyway, they argued that they wanted me to give them some
assurance of how we could be sure that he left American territory.
Well, that was a hard nut for a law student. By that time I knew
enough law to know. I said we, the student body, would raise the
money to pay his fare from the prison to a steamer. All the way.
The railroad and everything.

51

That was not enough, however. The other thing I agreed to do
was to appeal to our legation. At that time the head of the
legation in Washington was Wellington Koo [Ku Wei-chun]. In fact,
he knew Lin. I don't mean personally. He was a contemporary, you
know. I did not know Lin. I never met him. I was doing volunteer
work. I would write to the legation to ask them to appoint a
secretary to escort him from Maine until he was seated on board ship.
Well, he accepted. That was also a weak assurance, however, since
they knew the legation secretary had no jurisdiction. But, I knew
enough to respond. They accepted. But when I wrote Wellington Koo,
he declined, gave no reason. He just said, "I cannot help you."
So, he was selfish. You see, a Chinese ambassador or minister, his
job was to look after the interests of his countrymen, and this was
one of the interests, which concerned the reputation of China. A
criminal, a Chinese criminal, was on American soil. We wanted to
get him home. We wanted him just to fulfill this. If he appointed
a secretary, and if Lin should bolt, say, in Chicago or San
Francisco, well, I had fulfilled my promise, hadn't I? The legation
didn't see it that way. Then, later on, Wellington Koo gave me a
tip. He said, "Lin's family didn't request that." That was utter
nonsense. You don't have to wait for his family's request. From
then on, I despised Wellington Koo. I want that to be noted here.
I despise him, so I mention this incident.

Later on, you know how he was sent home? Very simple. Being a
criminal, although pardoned on American territory, the pardon was
conditional on his leaving Maine territory. If he stayed on Maine
territory, if he was released from prison and he didn't wish to go
home, he was an illegal alien. Then the federal authority,
immigration, could deport him, and he was deported without the
legation's assistance. So in that way he went home. I want to
record that because that was such a shame, not only on Lin, but on
Wellington Koo, for refusing to look after the interests of his
countrymen.

Student Organizations

At that time at Harvard I joined the Cosmopolitan (Hub. I
think that club went out of existence; when, I do not know. I
enquired about it; I couldn't find anything about it later on.
Well, it was meant mostly for foreign students, but we also had a
number of American members. One of the interesting members of that
club that I rememer so well was a man by the name of Lionel DeJersey
Harvard. He was a direct descendant of John Harvard, the founder of
Harvard College. The Harvard alumni of London raised the money to

52

send him to Harvard to study. I knew him quite well. He was an
Englishman, and he graduated in 1915. He entered the same year as I
did, but he graduated in 1915. After graduation in 1915, he went
back and joined the British army, and he died in action very soon
after in Flanders. Now his name is enshrined in a plot at the
memorial church at Harvard Yard. That's all I have to say about
him.

Then I belonged to the Chinese Student Club. I never tried,
nor was I ever approached, to join any of the — what you call them —
reputable or ancient Harvard clubs. Harvard had the Hasty Pudding,
the Glee Club, and some of the other clubs. I never tried to
solicit membership, nor was I ever approached. You see, I am not a
social climber or that kind.

I also belonged to the Diplomatic Club. The Diplomatic Club
was not primarily for the undergraduates, but it was composed of a
few graduate students, mostly, or people who were interested in
international law. So, I belonged to that club. We held dinners
once a month or so, or whenever we could find a speaker who could
tell us something about international events, we would have a
dinner. That's all. It was not exactly a social club. That's
about the clubs. What next?

BCG: A question. In the Chinese Student Alliance, did they engage in any
political activities, or was it a purely social club?

Chang: In those days, although the student body came from all over the

country, some on government scholarships, some privately supported,
and some from, say, Hawaii, who were native born Americans,
nevertheless, we were all united for China. We were Chinese. We
wanted to see China modernized, strong, so there was no party, no
factional dissention. But there was a distinction, at least for the
Eastern section. During the time when the Japanese "Twenty-one
Demands on China," in the Eastern section we organized an
association called the Kuo-fang. National Defense Association. What
could we do here for that defense? The idea was to discuss how to
prepare for that. So we were more or less serious minded. We had
no inter-college association other than those primarily for social
purposes. But there was another club, called the Flip-flop Club. I
think this club was primarily interested in American ways, American
habits, like take out an American girl to have ice cream, have a
dance, more or less like a social type club.

BCG: These were Chinese students?

Chang: Chinese students. I mean, while American girls were included, there
are also Chinese girls, but not enough Chinese girls to go around.
We at Harvard and Cornell and M.I.T. were not interested in joining
the Flip-flop. Most of them were from Yale, [laughs] Like T. V.
Soong, although from Harvard, he joined that, because his parents

53

were more or less of that type, you see. Wellington Koo, I think,
was a Flip-flop member, [laughs] And there are also those native
born, like those from Hawaii. So there's that kind of distinction,
but not parties, like the Communists and the Kuomintang.

In 1933, however, when I came here after I went to the
coronation of King George VI, I found the Chinese Student Alliance
no longer existed. I met several Harvard Ph.D. candidates who were
pronounced Communists. They belonged to the Communist party. And,
of course, there were the die-hard Kuomintang people, people who
supported Kuomintang. I sighed to myself. I said, China is
finished. Now the student body is no longer for China. They are
only for ideology, Kuomintang or Communist. I found that to be the
case; that divided the Chinese student body. They were no longer
for knowledge, seeking after truth in order to save China, to help
China, for China. They were more interested in their own party.
That is not Confucianism, and I'm against that. I said, this is bad
for China. That was my impression.

/
Chang: What else? Friends?

BCG: Yes. Also, if there were any professors that influenced you
particularly.

Friends and Acquaintances at Harvard

Chang: That I will talk about when I finish the law school. Oh, and then

about Harvard University, here in a general way is how it influenced
me. Here, I would like to talk about friends. Well, at Harvard it
was this way. Harvard is a place where they say everyone has to
find his own salvation individually. You either sink or swim on
your own. In my day, there were no such institutions as student
counseling or student advisers. Of course, if you had a problem,
you would go to the dean and talk it over. I know some of my
classmates had no money. They would go to the dean to see what help
they could get, or whether they should stay at Harvard or move to
some other university. With that kind of problem, you'd go to the
dean. There was no student adviser. But I knew what I wanted to
do, what I wanted to study. So everything depended on yourself,
what you chose to study, what you concentrated on, everything. You
had to do your own thinking, make your own decision.

One friend I would like to mention is Emmet Russell. He was a
Kansas City boy who came to Harvard, probably the same year as I
did. Anyway, we graduated together in 1914. He was the only son of
the family. His mother came with him and rented a house, so as to

54

provide her only son with board and lodging and BO on. We happened
to be very friendly. He concentrated in philosophy, and he was a
brilliant student. He graduated magna cum laude. better than I did.
And we would talk about what is life, and so on, things of that
kind, [laughs] Well, anyway, almost every week he would invite me
to his home, and his mother would cook us a meal. Sometimes I'd
reciprocate by inviting her and him on a Sunday to Marble Head to
have a fish dinner. Sometimes probably to Chinatown to have a
Chinese meal. Well, after graduation, I went to law school.

After he finished his theology course, he wanted to go to China
to become a missionary. I believe he was the first one, American,
to tell me, when we were in college, that in twenty-five years China
would be a world power. I was skeptical. Everybody said China was
the sick man of the Far East. It probably would be partitioned.
Although I didn't believe that, I never believed that in twenty-five
years China could catch up and be a world power. But he said that,
and many times. Anyway, when he applied to become a missionary, the
missionary society or something rejected him because he had only one
good eye. That, I think, was a congenital defect that he was born
with. They rejected him on those grounds. He wrote to me that he
wanted to come to China anyway. So, I recommended him to Chang Po
ling, the president of Nankai University. I said, "Do you need such
a man in whatever capacity?" They invited him to become an English
teacher. He taught there probably three years. Maybe Chou En-lai
was there, too, at that time! This was sometime after 1920. So
that's what I did for him. And, of course, after he finished his
China tour, he came back and finished law school and had a law
degree. Finally, he became a Baptist minister in New England, in
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We kept in close touch until he
died, when I was in China in 1978. When I came back, 1 got a note
that he had died. I was very sad that I did not see him again.

BCG: That is sad.

Chang: Then, Leveret t Saltonstall, who was my classmate at college and also
at law school. He was also secretary of my class. You see, after a
class graduates, they usually appoint a permanent chairman or
president and secretary. He was our secretary. Although we were
not close, whenever I was in Washington or in Boston when be was
governor I did call on him, just to pay a courtesy call, nothing
else. Well, he was the one who gave me a lot of help in my coming
to America when I left Communist China in 1951. Because I could not
apply for a visitor's visa, no use, I wrote him. I said, "If I come,
I will have to come to stay. I cannot come for six months and go
back to China." If I hadn't come to America, I could have gone back
if I wanted to. He helped me to find out about some legislation
through the State Department which, even though I could not come on
a visitor's visa, allowed me to come in some other way. So, he

55

found out there was an exchange of persons program. America would
invite scholars from China to come here at government expense. So
that's what he got me. I came here under the auspices of the State
Department. My trip was paid by the State Department. That's how I
came, through his help. He rendered me that great help.

I consider him as a good man. He was good, but not brilliant.
I mean, a brilliant man may not be influential, but a good man can
be influential. I respected him for his goodness. I think there is
a plaque commemorating the arrival of his ancestor, Sir Saltonstall,
on Charles Bank. I saw that plaque. Even today it is there. He
was a good man.

Then, Francis Say re. He was a classmate of mine at Harvard Law
School during my last graduate year there, the graduate year I put
in as a summer extra. He was there, so I met him, because we were
only three or four of us. So in that way I knew him well. But I
did not have much to do with him. Then, later on, when I was trying
to come over here not on a visitor's visa, he was the American
representative on the Trusteeship Council of the U.N. So I did
write to him. I said I had applied to come here, and Saltonstall
was helping me, and the State Department was screening me, could he
find out for me whether I would be successful? Of course, that was
an indirect way of asking him for help. And he did enquire. He
said, "You're all right." He didn't tell me when permission was
granted, but he said I had priority on some list. He also said,
"When you come, you should call on me." So when I came here I
called on him at the U.K., and he expressed concern for what I was
going to do, and so on. So he was another one who helped me in that
sense, although we were not communicating lifetime correspondents
like Emmet Russell. But they did help me. They were my classmates.

This leads me to another story about another family by the name
of MacFadden. Mrs. MacFadden was a widow. I think her husband had
been a minister. Anyway, she was very kind to me, especially to me,
but also in a way to the other Chinese students; not so much to the
student body in general. I don't know how we met each other. She
had two sons at Harvard College and one daughter at Radcliffe,
Caroline. She used to invite me to their home, and, less often, a
few of the Chinese students at Harvard or Radcliffe, to go there for
a meal. So, I came to know them rather well. One of her sons,
called Robert, graduated from Harvard. We became close friends and
remained so all our lives, until he died. He was one of the vice-
presidents of Citibank.

Mrs. MacFadden's daughter, that is Caroline, graduated from
Radcliffe. Later on, before she was married, for a few years she
usually conducted fashionable girls, rich families' girls, on trips
abroad. Those rich girls, they didn't go to college in those days.
They went to finishing schools. She was doing some finishing on
these girls, [laughter] By taking them around the world, to

56

England, to Italy, France, China, she gave them some finish. We
never corresponded unless I was in this country and I called on her.
One day I received a letter addressed to me, "F. Chang, Chefoo."
[laughs] I got that! You see, I was in Shanghai! Somehow they
knew me. So I received it in Shanghai, saying she was arriving by
steamer on such and such a day and expecting me to meet her. I did
meet her on that day, and with her were three or four of these rich
girls. I took them to West Lake, all of them.

BCG: Rangchow?

Chang: Hangchow. Hsi Hu [West Lake]. Her and her entourage, these girls.
In my home I ordered a banquet to entertain them. And, at Hsi Hu, I
paid all their expenses when they were staying there. When they
arrived, they wanted to see her passport and those of the girls.
She said she didn't bring them; they were in the Shanghai hotel.
Then I told the officer in charge, "Give me your mayor's telephone
number." He said, "What for?" I said, "It's none of your business.
I want to speak to your mayor." The mayor is an M.I.T. man, Chou
Hsiang-hsien. [laughs] I said I have a long-time Cambridge
girlfriend — by girlfriend I don't mean in the American sense; I mean
just a general girlfriend — who is taking some high-class society
girls to sightsee in Hsi Hu at my invitation, and they left their
passports in Shanghai. Your man won't allow her to land." But we
had already landed. So the mayor telephoned them, "Let them all
go." So we got off. And, that very evening, the mayor gave a
dance, though not for her. It just happened that the mayor gave a
dance. So he invited the whole bunch, [laughs] I mention that to
show another family that was good to me, and I also was good to
their children.

Conversion to Christianity

There was another man by the name of Frank Gay lord Cook, who
was a Harvard trained lawyer practicing in Boston, having a
residence in Cambridge, who married a Radcliffe girl but was without
children. I do not remember how we met, but anyway, he was very
good and kind to me. He usually invited me over once a week, mostly
Saturday, and sometimes he invited some other Harvard graduate
students for dinner. After dinner we would play pool in his
basement. You see, he was not only a one-time friend, he was just
interested in me for other reasons, so he invited me all the time.
After awhile, he wanted to take me to his church, that is, the First
Congregational Church of Cambridge. It was on the edge of the
Cambridge Commons, a few yards from the Washington Elm, where
Washington took command of the Continental Army. Later on,

57

gradually he invited me to visit the pastor of the church, whose
name was Dr. Raymond Caulkins. Well, I had no objections, so on
Sunday, when he proposed it, I would go along. One day Dr. Caulkins
came to me, saying they would like me to join their church. I said,
"What does it take to join your church?" And then he showed me the
Congregational Church creed. I don't remember what the creed
embodied. It was you believe in this, you believe in that.... I
said I could not subscribe to all the creed's beliefs. That is, in
my mind. Well, he said you don't have to subscribe to all of it.
He meant every specific belief. If, on the whole, you could accept
it, that would be enough. I said I would consider it.

After considerable soul searching, after considerable thinking,
I said I could subscribe in a general way to the church's creed.
The way I did that was this: I find Confucianism is not a religion,
but Confucius never denied that there is a God. He simply said,
"wei chin sheng, yen chih ssu," "if you do not know life, how could
you possibly know death," the life hereafter. He didn't deny there
is a hereafter, he simply didn't know. He said, "chih chih wei chih
chih, pu chih wei jm chih; shih chih ye," "when you know a thing, to
hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow
that you do not know it; this is knowledge." [Analects 2:17] He
didn't say anything about what he didn't know. And, after all,
Confucius teaches jen. and i. Jen means — it's hard to translate
jen, very hard. My impression is that jen is the basis of i. I
means right, do what is right, righteousness. And in order to have
righteous conduct, one must base their behavior upon jen, which
means your love for your fellow man. I think by this he meant, in
every man there is a humane element, a love for his fellow man.
From that love proceeds the desire to do what is good for your
fellow man, what is right for your fellow man. And he also said,
"Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you,"
whereas the Christian doctrine says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Well, for the Christian, "love" is not exactly this. The Christian
"love" — it's more like in America what love means — it means
everything; all kinds of love can be grouped together under that
general term, whereas the Confucian "love" is more impersonal.

I thought this way: I said to myself, religion is not a matter
of the mind. As a matter of mind, of reasoning, it's very hard for
me to accept that God created the earth in seven days, hard for me
to believe it or to accept that. I do believe there is a supreme
being or an ultimate cause, but my question is, who created the
ultimate cause? The scientists are digging, are trying to search
for the ultimate cause. Even if they could find out what was the
ultimate cause, my question would then be, who created that ultimate
cause? Who created the Christian God? You see, God greated the
earth, but who created God? I couldn't answer that question. But
as a matter of the heart, I was willing to subscribe to the creed of
the Congregational Church, because in that way I was making a public
commitment. I joined an organization, a group of people who

58

supported, were working for. the coming of Christ, that is, that
kind of world. In Confucianism, you do not depend on God for that
kind of salvation. Confucianism advocates becoming a chun-tzu.
Chun-tzu was translated by Legge, the English Sinologist, as the
"superior man." I don't think that's a good translation. I think
it probably meant the perfect man, the virtuous man. In other
words, anyone can evolve, can develop into a chun-tzu, by self-
examination. By self-examination, Confucius meant that you should
examine your own thinking, your own thoughts, to see whether they
conform to his teaching of this or that. If you do that by self-
examination, self-exertion, you can arrive at being a chun-tzu
instead of relying on the help of God to guide you toward that level
of virtue. Well that is what you may call my conversion to
Christianity. Is that a good explanation?

BOG: Yes.

Chang: Is that heretical to put that in my oral history?

BOG: No.

Chang: Anything objectionable?

BOG: No.

Chang: And also, although I'm a Christian. I'm not a sectarian. I don't

condemn the Catholics. I don't condemn the Unitarians. I think all
religions, being a matter of the heart, are trying to make you do
the good thing, relying upon their God. So I think all religions
are good. As for the ritual, the rules, those things, those are
man-made, man's interpretation, as you might interpret Confucianism.
So, the only difference is that Confucianism is not a religion. But
it does have a very strong influence on me.

I meant to say something later about a problem, but perhaps we
can talk about it here. I would like to talk about li.
International law recognizes the pursuit of li-i. interest, but
Confucianism only recognizes the pursuit of rightness, what is
right, not interests. Where shall I put that in, here or later?

BOG: Perhaps later, after you....

Chang: Okay. What next?

BOG: Are you getting tired?

Chang: We'd better stop now.

59

Harvard Curriculum and Choice of Lav as Focus of Study##
[Interview 5: August 23, 1983]

Chang: Today we are talking about the curriculum at Harvard, are we?

BCG: Yes. You didn't talk about that last time.

Chang: Yes, right now. Any questions before we go on?

BCG: Not at the moment. I'll have some as we go along.

Chang: Okay. We are now going to talk about what I studied at Harvard. As
I said before, I was admitted as an unclassified student at Harvard.
Before I entered Harvard, I had made up my mind to study banking.
Of course, in undergraduate study you do not specialize. That would
be my main major, but at Harvard they called it concentration. I
would concentrate on banking. The reason I decided to study banking
was this: Even while I was a young man, a student, in Chefoo, in
Peking, I saw everywhere you had the foreign banks. Almost every
country, they had a bank. It was not necessarily a government bank.
Some were government. For instance, the Russo-Asiatic Bank was
owned by the Russian government, with Chinese participation. You
had the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, which was private, British. You
had the Belgian Bank, the Dutch Bank, the French Bank, and so on.
They all bad imposing buildings, either in Peking or Shanghai. Each
time China signed a loan contract, mostly government contracts for
government purposes, like the shan-hou da cbieh-k'uan. the
Reorganization Loan, or the railway loan, she lost some of her
rights of control over her finance power or management of
enterprises and so on. In the case of the Reorganization Loan,
there was a stipulation in the contract that, during the life of the
loan, the customs service as then constituted would not be changed.
You see? That was a very catchy clause. I don't know if we need to
go into that.

When, as a young student, I saw these things, superficially,
from the outside, I said to myself, "They are trying to strangle
China through economic means, economic control." England did just
that in Egypt. That's the way the West entered those countries.
That's what prompted me at an early age. I wanted to study banking,
so that when I returned I would establish myself a Western-style
bank.

Of course, in China we had ch'ien-cbuang [old-style Chinese
private banks], but that only applied to local conditions. The
local banks were not in a position to cope with these foreign
competitors.

60

But anyway, that was my motivation. But during my first year
in Government 1, I read John Marshall's case called Marbury vs.
Madison, if I remember it correctly, something like that. That was
the case which ruled that the Supreme Court had the power of
judicial review and could rule an act of Congress unconstitutional.
That principle itself was novel, of course. It's novel. It's
American; not British. It only applies to a written constitution.
But it was the reasoning of Chief Justice John Marshall, the way he
reasoned, how he came to the conclusion, that fascinated me. You
see, I, as a child, had a logical mind, a mathematical mind. I
liked mathematics. I liked reasoning. That attracted me most.

I entered that course in the first year, between 1911 and 1912.
I said, since China overthrew the monarchy, China is a republic.
Well, you've got to have a law, a supreme law of the land, which
they call the constitution. With a written constitution, you cannot
govern like England with an unwritten one. You have to have a
written one. If you have a written one, you have to have some organ
which can say whether you have violated the constitution. I thought
I'd like to be a judge, to rule on that, [laughs]

That's how, in my first year, I shifted. I thought, rather
than be a banker, I would like to be a judge, because my mind is
more attuned to that kind of reasoning. That's how I decided.

Of course, in college you don't study law. Law was taught in
the law school. But in my time, the law school did not teach
international law, nor did any other law school. Every other law
school was modeled upon the Harvard Law School. They only taught
the common law, or what you may call the domestic law. Not
international law.

It was not until I graduated from Harvard that they gave a
course on international law at Harvard Law School as a graduate
course. We'll come to that later. But in the college, they did
teach international law to undergraduates, as well as in the
graduate department of Arts and Sciences. You could get a PtuD.,
under Professor G. G. Wilson.

BCG: You could take a course in international law as an undergraduate?

Chang: Yes, I began to study international law in college, as a preparation
to deal with the "foreign devils" in China, [laughs] "Foreign
devils" in quotations, huh! You see, at that very early age, I was
bent upon doing this thing, not for financial gain and for self-
enrichment. I just saw these things could not go on. It was not
right. I was going to do something to correct it, to right it.

So in the curriculum, what I studied was English, government,
economics, international law, and mathematics. Those were my main
courses. And my foreign language was German. I studied German in

61

preference to French, even though, of course, whoever wanted to
study law in those days usually studied French because it was the
diplomatic language. I decided to forego that; I studied German,
because Germany bad a foothold in Shantung, my native province.
They had a concession, which they had secured by force, and they
also had a concession to build that railway from Tsingtao to Tsinan.
I said, "Well, I'm a native of Shantung; maybe I'll have to deal
with the Germans later, so I better choose German as my second
language." However, after I left college, not to say after I left
law school, I never opened a German book. The only German I
remember is auf weidersehen. And also I translated an American
slang expression into German, "nobody home": niemand zu hause.
Nobody at home. A literal translation. It was idiomatic. At that
time if there was nobody home, then you were absent-minded. I
translated that as niemand zu hause. [laughter] That is my only
knowledge of German, and I still remember that much of German.
[ laughter]

While in school, in Harvard College, I learned a lot about
international law and constitutional law, too, because Professor
George Grafton Wilson was one of the two leading authorities on
international law in my time. I think the other one was Professor
Moore of Columbia. He wrote a compendium, a digest of international
law, while the text I used at Harvard was written by G. G. Wilson.

Although I used Wilson, my professor's textbook on
international law was so dry, so concise, he just gave the rules of
international law. Of course, he lectured with that textbook as a
basis. However, I took a special interest in international law also
because I found an English book, Professor [William Edward] Hall of
Oxford, his Treatise of International Law. It was not prescribed,
but I bought a copy; I read it in parallel with Wilson's treatise.
I found Hall's book so fascinating. It tells the history, the
origins, the formation of how the rule of law came to be. I found
this so fascinating. So I read more about Hall than about Wilson,
[laughs] I don't know whether I should put that here, you know;
it's a commentary on my professor. He's dead, long ago.

I think there was also a course on constitutional law given at
Harvard College. We used Dicey. Albert Venn Dicey was a professor
at Oxford. Again, I found his treatise on the British constitution
so fascinating, because it was unwritten. Somehow those two books
remained in my memory, although I forgot the contents, but they
remained in my memory. They made a deep impression on me, those two
treatises.

Then I studied mathematics up till calculus. I liked my
professor — what was his name? Well, let it go.

Although I did not reach a high standard of knowledge of the
German language, in my courses I did read some German poems. I must

62

here confess that some of these poems — I forgot the author; maybe
it's Heine, I don't know — influenced me the most, culturally. They
were nobly written, so civilizing, so broadening, that I felt
directly moved by those poems I read. Somehow they opened up to me
a nobler world in which I felt comfortable. Now my impression is
hazy, but I do remember those poems exerted the best influence on my
attitude toward life. Life could be noble, could be happy, only if
you had the right ideas and right thoughts. But I forgot what they
were. You see, since after college, I never opened a German book.

Anything else you want to ask me about my curriculum?
BOG: No, I can't think of anything.

Chang: I'll tell you something when I return to China about why I didn't
take up law. Not here; after that.

I was not a brilliant student, nor did I burn my midnight oil.
I just did my homework and read what the teacher prescribed and
never tried to spend hours and hours reading outside my courses
broadly. So I never received any awards. Of course, there were
some awards on scholarship, but I never applied. I didn't need
them. But I did graduate in three years after coming from a
college, from Ch'ing Hua, which was not up to the standards of a
real college. But it was probably up to the standard of some of the
Western colleges, [laughter] Anyway, I graduated in three years
cum laude.

BOG: That's something to be commended.

Chang: Yes, that was. Without burning my midnight oil. I was just very

systematic. I did my work regularly, routinely, systematically, but
I never tried very hard or said, "I must get an A." I never aimed
at that, never. I felt that mere book learning was not so
important. I was a little different from the average Chinese
student, because the average Chinese students just came here and
studied. They had no friends, no contact with their American
counterparts. Not all of them; most of them. I had contact with
church people, with professors, with students, and so on. I engaged
in a lot of student activities. Because I also thought that was
important, not just book learning. After all, book learning is book
learning, [laughter]

Observations on China and the West

Now we come to this theme: How did your education at Harvard
and the years you spent in the United States affect your view of

63

Chinese problems vis a vis the West and your own cultural
affiliation? Here are two questions: What were my views of the
West before and after I came to America? And did the Western
learning change my view of the Chinese cultural tradition? These
are two questions.

First, you see, as a young man, as a student, before I came to
the Dnited States, China was already in ferment because of the
unequal treatment we received from the West. Only at that time, we
did not call it unequal treatment. We just knew foreigners came to
China and imposed on China so many conditions China had to accept,
because China was defeated in the Opium War. Of course, the rights
and wrongs of the Opium War are another question. I have never
studied carefully the documentation. Maybe on some legal grounds,
China was at fault. But there was no question China had the right
to prohibit the importation of opium into China. Lin Tse-hsu was
the commissioner appointed to enforce that policy. He may have
legally been wrong in burning the British-owned opium on the hulks
moored in Chinese waters. That question I never went into. He may
have been legally, technically wrong. But about the general policy,
no question China had the right to forbid it. But that was because
the Chinese never previously had to deal with foreign powers in such
a way. They never knew there was such a thing as an international
law. They only judged it from their own tradition, their own
classical tradition. In the classical tradition, they never talked
about a law in the national sense. They talked about the right and
wrong in a moral case, not whether legally you are technically
wrong.

Anyway, I had a general knowledge of these things as a young
student, so I thought China got a raw deal. China was not treated
by the civilized West fairly, because the Chinese officials lacked a
knowledge of international law or Western ways and customs. That
was my impression.

When I came to the United States, all my education at Harvard
gave emphasis to that view. Because as I began to study law as it
applied to Western nations, I found the application of international
law by the Western powers to what they call the semi-civilized or
different cultures was not done properly. So it only emphasized my
childhood views.

Also, I began to feel this way: that in China the Confucian
tradition, Confucian culture inculcates doing what is right, not
only as a person, but as a nation. What is my national interest?
If it's my national interest, I pursue it, irrespective of the
rights of the other party. In other words, international law
sanctioned the protection of national interest, but national
interest as defined and conceived by individual nations. That's why
there were so many wars and conflicts between nations, because they

64

were each pursuing their own national interests, as each nation
perceived it.

At that time, there was no United Nations. There was no
international court of justice to adjudicate. Even when the court
was established, you were not subject to its jurisdiction unless you
submitted to it. So, the Chinese idea is what is right, not what is
my interest. Of course, China has interests, but what is the
correct thing to do to protect those interests? China conceived of
these interests in moral terms. That's why Chinese civilization or
culture spread from the Yellow River to the north and to the south,
to the border of Hongkong, to the south of China. And then to
Korea, to Japan, to Vietnam, and the surrounding countries. China
had tributary states, but by tributary state it didn't mean that
China exploited them or tried to impose unfair conditions upon them
for China's benefit. It simply meant that these surrounding nations
accepted Chinese culture, or assimilated it, because that was the
only thing they had. China never imposed Chinese culture on them.
They willingly accepted it. For instance, in Japan they had no
indigenous written language. Before the Meiji reform of 1868, all
Japanese documents, history, were written in Chinese. The same with
Korea. You see? Chinese culture spread in a natural way. They
paid tribute. By tribute, it meant like equals. Once a year or
once in a few years, they would send a mission to Peking to present
t'u-huo. local products; not anything spectacular, but just local
products. And in return, the Chinese emperor gave them back
reciprocal presents of probably higher value, like silk, and so on.
That's all. An exchange of greetings, an exchange of presents, a
visit. That's what it meant. So China never tried to pursue that
kind of relation exclusively for her own benefit.

China, for example, defended Vietnam against French
colonization in the nineteenth century. Of course, China was
defeated. Also, China defended the legitimacy of the Yi
dynasty in Korea when Japan wanted to subvert that monarchy. That
was the cause of the Sine- Japanese War. And China was greatly
humiliated. That I would call the difference between pursuing your
national interest and doing what is right. I do not mean by that
China was always right. But the Chinese culture taught about what
is right, not merely what is to your benefit. Does that answer your
question?

BCG: Your years at Harvard did nothing to alter your view of Chinese
culture?

Chang: It did not change my views of China's problems with the West.
Because China no doubt was not the aggressor. When I came to
Harvard, it strengthened my view that it was so. Of course, here I
might mention, when the European war broke out in 1914, that was the
year I graduated, I said to myself, in China about two thousand
years ago, there was a Chan-kuo. the "warring states," and Ch'in

65

Shih-huang emerged and unified the country, of course, by force.
But his regime did not last, because it was too totalitarian and
opposed to the Confucian school of thought.

In comparison, China was like Europe. You see, Europe is
composed of so many states within an area about the size of China.
If China could unify, become one nation, why couldn't Europe? Why
should Europeans fight each other? I said, because of the pursuance
of special interest. I held the view that it was quite unnecessary.
The British excuse of the violation of Belgian neutrality for
entering into the First World War to fight Germany was a sham,
subterfuge. The real reason was England did not like the Kaiser.
They did not like Kaiser's commercial competition and naval
competition. The Kaiser, although he was [related to the] British —
[through] Victoria's daughter — thought he did not have his place in
the sun. He couldn't get much of a colony in Africa.

f*

Germany wanted a piece of the pie, and England wouldn't give
it. Germany's commerce was progressing by leaps and bounds.
England was afraid of that. Germany was building up a navy, and
England wanted to rule the sea. How can you prevent another country
from building her navy? That's none of your business. I think
those are the real causes of the First European War. Of course,
there are others, but those are the main causes.

After the First World War, England went downward. After the
Second, still further downward. So, now she's a third-rate power,
not a first-rate power. I held those views at Harvard when I was
first there. I didn't know what they could change, but those were
my views.

After the Second World War, I think Churchill and some other
people discussed the federation of Europe. That didn't come about,
but they did have the Common Market. Economically, they are now one
market. So it's approaching a unification in some ways. That's
about all I can say on that subject.

Views on Political Reform in China

BOG: Your years at Harvard, did they in any way, for example, change your
views on how China's problems could be solved?

Chang: Since I studied law, I was this way. By nature, I am a Northerner.
A Northerner is different from a Southerner in a general way. The

66

Northerner is more like the British, phlegmatic, rather cool. They
will think, look, and see before they jump. In other words, unless
they have already something in place, they will not do away with the
old. They are careful. They are not impulsive. Whereas the
Southerners (there ie the difference between the Yangtze Valley and
the Pearl [River] Valley Cantonese) are more impulsive, more easily
moved. They like the change for change's sake. So by nature, I am
a little bit on the conservative side, cautious side. So, as I
studied law, naturally I was not a diehard. I favor change. I know
China must change. I hoped I could play a part in that change. But
I thought change could come about by legal and diplomatic means.
Internally, by constitutional means instead of by revolutionary
means. Externally, by diplomatic means. And if diplomatic means
failed, then the last resort is war. That was my way of thinking.
That is why, when the revolution came, when the monarchy was forced
to abdicate, I lamented on China's break in continuity. You see,
the British were geniuses at making use of institutions — their
institutions are a thousand years old, the monarchy, the legal
system. They evolved. They changed. But they never replaced the
old with an entirely foreign system. I am of that type of thinking.
I favor China evolving from the old by orderly constitutional or
legal means, without a break in continuity. Of course, I'm not God.
History happened; I couldn't have it happen that way. But it showed
the break in continuity. Of course, when they argued — what about
the warlords? The warlord period simply shows that when you break
the continuity, you have to have a period of confusion, of
government by force. Like in the dynasties. After each dynasty,
there is a period of fighting until you unify the country. That is
the break. But in each break, they had restored the traditional
Chinese system, you may call it the Chinese unwritten constitutional
system.

Although the Manchus were a different race, they bad a
different culture, a different language, they governed China
according to China's historical statecraft, Chinese culture, Chinese
system, everything. That's the way they governed. I call that
China's unwritten constitutional system. When they broke it, they
still always reverted to it. And, of course, it did not always stay
the same. Nothing does that is administered by men.

China was governed not so much by laws as by people, people who
were trained and disciplined in the Confucian culture, the Chinese
culture. They tried to interpret, to decide. Of course, I do not
believe in a personal rule, a human rule. But that's different. In
the West, everything is according to law, what is written, the
technicalities. In China, it was what was right, what was
reasonable. That was the standard. I don't mean there was not
abuse, but that was the standard. Also, there was a difference
between Chinese culture and the West. It's a matter of degree. In
China, we have li. propriety. In the West you talk about etiquette,
which applies only socially, in that way, not nationally. But in

67

China, everything is governed by propriety. What does propriety
really mean? To observe propriety is to prevent what might happen.
Lav tries to punish after an act happens; li is to prevent an act
from happening instead of punishing that act after it happens.
That's li.

That idea is not so much emphasized in Western culture, so far
as I can detect. Of course, the li as laid down in ancient times
might not be appropriate for the present. For instance, in China
the sexes were segregated, even among relatives. When you had a
festival, a feast, the male and the female members of the two
families did not sit together at dinner. They were separated.
That's li. That may not be appropriate for a certain period of
time. But the idea was to prevent what might happen. In other
words, to prevent promiscuity. That's why. But law cannot prevent
that. Law is applicable when you have acted wrongly, then you are
caught and punished. That's the difference between the Chinese way
and the Western way. It's a difference of degree. I don't mean
that in the West there's no such thing as li. but in China the li
is a very essential part of the education. Any other questions?

BCG: You left China in August of 1911.
October —

The revolution broke out in

The

1911 Revolution as Seen by Chinese Students in America

Chang: October 10, 1911. The Wuchang uprising. It was an accident.

BCG: Right. I know. Can you remember any of the reactions that Chinese
students in America had toward events that were happening in China?

Chang: I think, so far as my information went, or what I can recollect, I
think the student body as a whole was rejoicing. In my own case, I
was glad, in a way, that China would become a republic. The water
was already over the dam. It was a fait accompli. You could not go
back. But I lamented the breach of continuity, as I said, because
at that time, the court had already decreed preparation for a
constitutional monarchy in five years. First nine years. I think
1913 was the debate. Why don't we wait, I thought. Well, that's
history. Even so, in my case, I was not so happy, because I was not
sure a constitutional monarchy would itself work. Because, just
like the reform movement it was no use to issue by decree new laws,
"This is abolished," "That is abolished." You had to have the
backup. You had to have the people trained, in place to maintain
the continuity. Because of my native instinct, I am and was more
careful. I said there's nothing there. As I saw it, who would be

68

China's constitutional supreme court and chief justice? [laughs]
Nobody I Of course, there was Wang Ch'ung-hui, but I had no respect
for him. He was a Yale man. I don't want to talk about him.

Anyway, there was a lack of teachers. They abolished the
classical education system. All right, in every hsien, every
province, the order went out, "Establish schools." primary schools,
college- lev el. and then Pei-ching Ta-hsueh, the university. Okay,
they had them in name; who were the teachers? They didn't have the
teachersl [laughs] You cannot create a Harvard by decree. You just
couldn't do it. You have to build that up. That was my feeling.

By the way, if you are interested, you know. Yuan Shih-k'ai.
because of historical reasons, you may say he betrayed the Ch'ing
dynasty. One might argue the Ch'ing dynasty did not treat him
properly. Therefore, when he was called upon from retirement to
fight the rebellion, he did not mean to do it. He meant only to
have the Ch'ing dynasty abdicate. That's what it was all about.

What was 1 going to say? [pauses to think] Yuan Shih-k'ai was
elected the provisional president by the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang
general assembly, they wanted to control him by the presidential
form of government. Of course, you couldn't do that. The
presidential form and the cabinet form are antagonistic. It's a
contradiction. They tried, and they failed. Finally, then Sun
Yat-sen initiated a second revolution. He wanted to unseat Yuan
Shih-k'ai, and he failed. He failed in the first place, and now this
fellow was harder to deal with than the Manchu dynasty. The Manchu
dynasty at that time already had no power. The power rested in
the Chinese, the Chinese officials, generally. How could they
control Yuan when they couldn't deal with the weaker one? It was
bound to fail. So after he failed in his second attempt at a
revolution, it was 1913, I wrote an article to the Outlook.* The
Outlook was edited by Abbott and Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt
was a contributing editor. I routinely read that weekly. I think
it was in the August issue of Outlook — I forgot; it must be August
or July — I wrote an article against Sun's second revolution. That
article I found in the San Francisco Public Library years ago. I
happened to be there one time. They had this Outlook on exhibit.
It's out of print now, out of publication. I asked to see it. I
found it. When I read it the second time, I thought it was very
childish, [laughs] But anyway, that expressed my sentiments. If

*The Present Political Crisis in China," Outlook. August 16. 1913.
pp. 849-850.

69

BOG:
Chang;

BCG:

Chang:

you care to, you can look that up. It's the Outlook. I think it's
the 1913 August number.

I will, indeed.

The reason I remember was this: I was just a student, a junior at
Harvard, and when I saw this happen, I didn't like it. Nobody
prompted me. And I did not know whether they would publish it. Far
less did I know they would pay me! [laughs] So I just sent it in.
And when I was attending a conference, Chinese student's conference,
at Ithaca, Cornell, I received a letter from Outlook including a
check for thirty dollars. That was the only money I earned while a
student in America. Thirty American dollars. I spent it on Coney
Island and some show in New York on the way back, [laughs]

You've told me before about the Chinese Students' Alliance,
remember any of their reactions to the revolution in China?

Do you

Of course, outwardly everybody was in favor. Outwardly, there was
no question. At heart, I don't know. You see, outwardly, I would
say it was a fait accompli, it was okay. Outwardly. I liked the
idea of a republic. If you change from a monarchy, and if you can't
have a constitutional monarchy, then the only thing to have is a
republic. But how well that would work in China was my question. I
never raised that, but I had my doubts. That's why I was against
Dr. Sun.

BCG: Was there much response among other Chinese students to this
article?

Chang: No, no response. Nobody. We had a Chinese Students' Monthly. One
year I was president of the alliance (each year we had a new
president), and appointed T. V. Soong to be the editor of the
Chinese Students' Monthly. He would appoint the manager, then the
student body would contribute articles to that publication. I think
some libraries do have the back numbers.

BCG: I will look it up.

Chang: I do remember, you see, in those days there was not much serious
discussion of national problems of China in the Chinese Students'
Monthly because it was not up to standards. Really, not up to
standards. It was usually about student affairs. I think I was one
of the very few who expressed some really thoughtful things. I did
write one article which I thought was — I can tell you about that
article.

As I recounted in my past interview, I signed a bond before I
came out; that is, the government had first priority to have my
services after I returned. And also, we are allowed seven years.
We did not all use seven years, but the maximum was seven years to

70

stay in this country, to study whatever subject we chose. The
government did not lay down any restrictions. Immediately after the
revolution in 1912, Ch'ing Hua. instead of being under the control
of the Yu-mei-hsueh-wu chu, had a president. They appointed a
president to run it. That hsueh-wu chu no longer existed. So
thereafter, all the recruits were examined by Ch'ing-hua, not the
hsueh-wu chu. And Ch'ing Hua had a president appointed by the
Wai-chiao pu. His name was Chou I-chun. By the way. he was a
Yale man. But only an A.B., no more, [laughs]

I'll tell you what happened. As soon as he became Ch'ing Hua
College president, he issued a rule that we were no longer allowed
to spend seven years in America. We were only allowed six years, as
an undergraduate course. That was the same idea as the Wai-chiao pu
idea — do you remember? — to recruit only teenagers, while the Chang
Chih-tung favored people older. The same idea.

So I wrote an article in the Chinese Students' Monthly strongly
attacking this new rule.* [laughs] I was a rebel in that case. I
said, China didn't need youngsters who came to America only to learn
a smattering of subjects, an inkling, and go back as an American-
style student. What China needed was specialized knowledge. You
cannot gain specialized knowledge just with four years of college,
especially in those days. Except a few, like the Ivy League
colleges, the other colleges were mostly about a high school level.
You had to have specialized knowledge. In order to have special
knowledge, you had to study after you got your first degree and do
some research in some branch of learning. And after that, that rule
no longer had any effect! [laughs]

In those days, I don't think many people like me voiced their
views in the Chinese Students' Monthly.

BOG: Do you know when this was written?

Chang: It must be after 1912.

BOG: In the Chinese Students' Monthly?

Chang: Yes, Chinese Students' Monthly. I think some universities still
have that back number. I don't know.

BOG: I'll see if I can find it. Did you write any other things for

publication while you were at Harvard, other than these two pieces?

*"The Effect of the Six Year Limit," Chinese Students' Monthly.
April 12, 1914. pp. 551-553.

71

Chang: One is that to Outlook; one is this one. I don't remember any
others.

If that rule had applied, I wouldn't have been able to go to
Harvard Law School, [laughs] I would have been a different F.
Chang!

BOG: Among the Chinese students at Harvard, did you make any friends who
were later important to you in your later career?

Chang: T. V. Soong would be one. Should I say something about him?

BOG: If there's anything important about Harvard with regard to T. V.
Soong, if it's —

Chang: Let's put it this way. He came one year after me. He graduated in
1915; I graduated in '14. He was sent out by a bureau called the
Chi-hsun chu. You see, after Yuan Shih-kai became the provisional
president, he wanted to reward the Kuomintang party, because it was
they who surrendered the presidency and yielded to him. So he
established a bureau called the Chi-hsun. Chi-hsun means "in
search of merit." That bureau financed scholarships awarded to the
sons of the Kuomintang, who had merit, and who had probably elected
him. [laughs]

So Soong Tzu-wen came under that kind of scholarship. But,
after two years or so, somehow the Ch'ing-hua College rules
permitted students to transfer. People who were not on a Ch'ing-hua
scholarship, they could apply and get half a scholarship. So then
he became a Ch'ing-hua half-scholarship student until he finished
and went back to China.

He was a Cantonese; I was a northernese. At Harvard, I do not
know why, he had no friends, as far as I could see. Somehow we
became quite friendly. He liked me, and we became friends. Once
the Chinese student club of Princeton challenged Harvard to a
debate. Sometimes at these conferences, we'd debate between the
Chinese teams from different colleges. Princeton challenged
Harvard. I think I was the president of the Harvard team that year,
so I had to put up a team, at least three. So, I approached Soong.
I said, "Would you become a member? I'll coach you." He promised,
but after two days he said no, he changed his mind. And that, and
other things, impressed me that Soong was "ficklish." That was the
word I applied to him.

BOG: Ficklish?

Chang: Ficklish. Changeable. He did not stick to his position. Ficklish.
So for that reason, I did not quite trust him. He had always been
good to me as a student, before he became my boss. But after he
became my boss, I didn't like him. I didn't like the boss in him.

72

BOG: You can tell me about that later.

Chang: But, while students, we were quite good friends. He liked me. and
whenever I went to Shanghai he entertained me, and so on. But as a
boss. I disliked him.

BOG: Let me change the tape.

Harvard Law Schoolfl

Chang: When I entered law school, there was no course given on

international law. as I said before. What we studied was mostly
common law and corporation law. that sort of thing. 1 graduated in
1917 from the law school and. of course, 1 did not graduate with
distinction. Again. I probably did not put in enough study. I just
did my homework, and 1 finished very easily, without effort. But
that's all right; I graduated. Well, 1 had always had an admiration
for Oxford, probably because of the professors' treatises I had
read. 1 admired Oxford. And I wanted to go to Oxford to spend one
year, since I still had one year left. Although the seven years was
for study here, I could arrange to have one year in England and have
the scholarship still apply. So I intended to go to England. That
was 1917. 1 wrote to the Chinese legation in London, enquiring
about going to England in wartime. I received a reply advising me
not to do it. They said, during the wartime, the conditions in
England were not so easy. Besides, the Atlantic crossing was very
dangerous. They dissuaded me from going over. During wartime 1 did
not think 1 could manage it alone.

At this time, there was Mr. Westengard. 1 think his first name
was Jan. 1 don't remember. He must be a Norwegian or some sort of
Scandinavian. He had just returned from a tour of duty as advisor
to the Siamese foreign office. He was appointed professor at
Harvard Law School, to give a course on international law to
graduate students. Seeing that, instead of going home, 1 enrolled
in his course and spent one year at Harvard Law School taking
international law under him. There were probably at most three of
us.

He was very kind to me and took an interest in me. When that
term ended, I was going back between September and August. Without
my asking, he wrote me a letter of introduction to the American
charge d'affaires in Peking by the name of [John V. A.] MacMurrey.
Just a letter of introduction saying I was his student, a graduate
of Harvard, just introducing me. 1 had no idea of asking for

73

anything. It was just his idea. Probably he thought a man of my
kind, that is, who was educated at Harvard and going back to China,
should probably get acquainted with the chargfe d'affaires, and maybe
the chargfe d'affaires should get to know me, in order to have some
contact with the Chinese.

Accordingly, when I reached Peking, I went to the embassy,
called on him, and presented my letter. The charge d'affaires was
very formal and very cool, not much to say. Immediately I could see
he was a member of the diplomatic corps, and he didn't care to make
my acquaintance. You see, in 1918 and '19, that was the period when
the Chinese agitation against the signing of the Versailles Treaty
was at the beginning stage. A lot of ferment was brewing in the
universities. He showed no interest in getting my opinion or maybe
having a channel of information between him and the outside Chinese
world.

So, I just got up and said good-bye. After that, we never met
again. I never tried to call again. I had nothing to ask of him.
I just wanted to present the letter and see what he had to say.

So I wrote a letter immediately to Professor Westengard,
telling him about my having delivered his letter and how the
interview went. But to my great surprise and sorrow, I received a
letter from his executor saying he died before having seen my
letter. That was the end of it. Very sad. He was not old. He
must have been in his forties or fifties, like that. He just died
that way. If he had lived, I think he would have been most
interested in the progress of my career in China, and he would have
been a good friend, a very good friend.

BOS: That's a shame.

Chang: Things in this world happen this way. You have no control. In

[Walter] Cronkite's words, "That is the way it is." [laughs] That's
the way it is. To this day, I remember him. I was very sad, very
sorry, because he was the only professor, both at college and law
school, who showed an interest in me. You see, I was the only
Chinese student at that time at Harvard Law School. They showed no
interest in following up what a law school student could do in
China. Never, [laughs] He was the only one who showed any
interest. I only took one course under him. There were three of
us, I think, [laughs]

You seem to know his name, Westengard.
BOG: Yes, it's in your written account.
Chang: It was there?
BCG: Yes.

74

Return Trip ^o China

Chang: Oh. I didn't know that. And then I had to decide which route to

take back to China. I'd better finish this part. Either by way of
San Francisco — that's where I came from — or by way of Vancouver.
Since I did not carry out the advice of my English teacher. Florence
Helliker. to go to Yale. I thought I owed her some sort of apology.
At that time, she had returned to her home in Seattle. So I
purposefully routed my voyage from Seattle to Shanghai. In Seattle
I called on her. She seemed to have forgotten all about it. She
treated me very well. Because her family was in the real estate
business, she ordered an auto from her firm to drive me around to
see the city. Then she took me herself to see her grandfather,
Denning, I think, who lived in a big mansion, who was the first
white settler of Seattle. I thought I paid my debt. Again, that's
my Confucian training, you see. I never forget that.

BOS: Then you took the ship back to Shanghai. That was in what year?

Chang: Nineteen eighteen. I might add, on the ship to Shanghai in 1918 —
that was after the 21 Demands by Japan — I took the first class. I
was one day walking on deck alone. It was between Kobe and
Shanghai. You know, that part, nearing China. A Japanese male came
forward to talk to me. He spoke broken English. He looked to me
like a military man. because he was broad-shouldered, like that,
[demonstrates] He began to talk to me like this: China should be
two countries, north and south, to put that idea in me. Immediately
I said, "You are a spy. You cannot fool me. You are not educated
well enough to fool a Harvard Law School graduate like that, so
simple-minded." Immediately I detected that. So, I just let him
talk. I wouldn't answer, and he made no impression. You see, even
at that time. Japan was using every means to undermine Chinese
unity. He wanted me to go back and initiate some movement in favor
of Japan. So at this late hour. Reagan and some Americans are
switching to China, the same as Japan did. [laughter]

Treatment of Chinese in the United States

BOG: While you were in the United States, did you ever experience any
discrimination, since you were Chinese?

Chang: I would say this: I know there was discrimination, but I did not
feel it myself because I had friends who respected me, and I
reciprocated on equal terms. They took the initiative. They

75

befriended me, invited me to their homes, and so on. So,
personally, I didn't feel it. But I know there was discrimination.
For this reason, because the Chinese who came to this country were
working people; they are the dregs of the Cantonese society. They
came here; they are the diggers, miners, railroad builders. They
are uneducated; even in the Chinese sense, they are uneducated.
They didn't know the English language. They became chop-suey shop
owners and laundry men. Some of them even had their queue on before
the revolution — after that no more. And also, there were no second-
generation Chinese. They were not allowed to bring their wives
here. So, there were no Chinese natives who were born here and
assimilated. You see, it's more difficult to assimilate an
illiterate than to assimilate a native-born. And they could not own
property, real property, as they say in California.

I knew there was. But as for myself, I would say that, in
college, of course, they were educated. They knew China had a
history, had a civilization, and they allowed my knowledge of
Chinese to be an ancient language. They recognized that as an
ancient language. They knew China had a civilization. But the man
on the street, whenever I met one, somehow took me to be Japanese,
because I was not dressed like the ordinary Chinese, in the Chinese
dress. Like a jacket. I was dressed in the Western style. They
took me for Japanese. Or they asked me, "What is your name?" I
said Chang. Somebody said Li Hung-chang. I said, "No, Li Hung-
chang is Li, not Chang." [laughter] So, I would say personally I
did not meet, at least I did not feel I was discriminated against.
In fact, some of them honored me. I would say that. I do know
there was some line. But I cannot pinpoint that.

Oh, about chop-suey. Nowadays, after the Second World War,
many American GI's in China learned about Chinese food better.
Chop-suey means tza-sui. "mixed pieces." Tza-sui is a common dish
in China served by the roadside restaurants for the peddlers, people
working on the streets or carrying, and so on. When they needed
refreshment, they stopped over at a small restaurant and ate chop-
suey. It means tza-sui. like hash. It's a cheap sort of thing.

One thing curious about that was that here they call it chop-
suey. That meant that it was food for the laborer, because they are
laborers, like in China. One curious thing happened, I think about
ten years ago, with regard to the Hsing-hua Lou, which was a very
big restaurant on Grant. (Now it is the site of Si-hai. "Four
Seas.") I went there. I found on the menu "Li Hung-chang chop-
suey." I said, well! [laughter] Li Hung-chang ate chop-suey!
Chop-suey was named in honor of Li Hung-chang. That's the greatest
contradiction I could imagine! What was it? It was chicken,
almonds, and so on, a mixture. It was not the so-called chop-suey.
But now, no more.

76

When Hsing-hua Lou went out of existence, Li hung-chang chop-
suey also went out. [laughter] I think I'll end there.

77

III EARLY PROFESSIONAL CAREER
[Interview 6: August 31, 1983]##

Service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Peking

Chang: How did I come to be employed by Wai-chiao Pu? Returning to China,
to Peking, in the late summer of 1918, I was interested in finding
out how I could establish a judicial career, because my aim in
studying law was to do something to revoke extra-territoriality. I
surveyed the conditions in Peking, and I found them unfavorable.
Because in those days China was in transition; the old Chinese
precedents and laws, Ta Ch'ing Lu [Great Ch'ing Code], were still in
force. But the Ta Ch'ing Lu was not Ta Ch'ing; it's based on the
T'ang Lu [T'ang Code], and so on. At the same time, China also had
some courts in the modern style in Peking and Shanghai, those
cities, not in the rural hsien. In the hsien the magistrate was
still the judge. In all those positions of power and influence,
like the Szu-fa pu. the judicial department, and so on, the
judgeships were practically all manned either by the old-timers, the
people who had connections with the law from the Ch'ing dynasty, or
Japanese returned students. The Japanese returned students, as I
said before, were usually men well educated, with degrees already.
They went to Japan, and in two to three months they could read the
Japanese script. In those days it had more Chinese characters than
Japanese. And the Japanese textbooks were probably translations of
the West. Nevertheless, I don't think anyone graduated from a law
school like the Imperial University of Tokyo. I don't think anyone
graduated from that; they just went to those schools where they
studied economics or politics. When they returned, they lumped that
together with law. They knew law. So, those positions of control
and power were in their hands.

You see, I wanted to know how to proceed, whether I should
start as a lawyer. I got the impression that a lawyer could not —

78

usually, I don't mean in every case — usually could not win his case
unless he bribed the judge. Anyway, that was the popular impression
at the time. Finding that to be the situation, I was very much
discouraged. Because that was my ambition. I wanted to start from
the bottom and later on do something to revoke extraterritoriality.

So I went to see Wang Ch'ung-hui. You know his name.
BCG: Yes.

Chang: He studied law at Yale and then went to Germany. He was at that
time Fa-lu pien-ting kuan kuan-chang. "Head of the Bureau for the
codification of the law." I did not know him. I just called on him
to see what he had to say. I wasn't asking for a job, you know; I
was just trying to find out if I wanted to pursue a legal or
judicial career. What was the best thing to do? To be a lawyer or
to get a job in the Szu-fa pu?

Instead of giving me any advice as an elder who had experience,
he launched into a monologue severely attacking and criticizing the
case system. The case system is the Harvard [system]. Dean
introduced it. Then, later on, it spread all over America. I did
not know when he studied law at Yale what system they used. But,
anyway, he attacked the Harvard system. When I heard that, I just
listened, and then I bade him goodbye. I said, this is useless; he
did not behave like an elderly gentleman or one who preceded me as a
returned student. I was looking for some hint, not for a job.

I was very much discouraged. Well, one day I received a call
from the vice-president of Ch'ing Hua College, Chao Kuo-ts'ai. I
knew both Ts'ao Yun-hsiang, the president, and Chao Kuo-ts'ai, the
vice-president. He wanted me to see him. Then he told me that
Wai-chiao Pu had asked him to recommend a student of law, because
the First World War was coming to an end — this was the fall of
1918 — and there were many legal problems that the pu had to handle.
So they asked him to recommend a law student. He asked me if I
would be willing to accept. I said that was not my first choice.
As I said, I was looking into the judicial part. But, since I had
found out that the conditions were like that, I would accept.
That's how I was employed.

Positions Held. Duties, and Responsibilities

You asked me what position I held. You see, the Peking Wai-
chiao Pu was hidebound, although many of its members were abroad as
secretaries, as ministers (at that time there were no ambassadors),

79

and also like Yen Hui-ch'ing and Wellington Koo. they were all
American trained. Nevertheless, the Wai-chiao Pu was a continuation
of the old Wai-wu pu. Of course, the old nomenclature was no longer
used. They called the bu-chang — how do you call it? — the vice-
minister. Then there were four counsellors, and the division heads
of different departments. So, you see, they could not give me a
substantive post. A substantial post meant a post designated and
written into law, into the charter, like an organized charter. You
have so many positions put in like that which were prescribed by
law. Those were limited. For instance, there were four counsellors.
You could not appoint a fifth counsellor. There were only so many
departments. And even if there were a substantive post, I, being a
novice — I had just returned — didn't expect to be appointed to any
high substantive post.

So the order was that I be tiao-pu pan-shih. "appointed to
perform duties in the ministry." It's something like the hsing-
tsou. You know what I mean?

BOG: Yes.

Chang: The hsing-tsou was an ancient terminology. As in Nan-shu-fang-

hsing-tsou, it means that you are performing duties in the emperor's
study. Or, in modern terms, it corresponds to an assistant. Your
rank was not determined. If there were any legal problems, the
ministry would want me to handle them or render an opinion, that was
my duty.

BCG: Were there no other lawyers in the Wai-chiao Pu?

Chang: I would say not more than one or two. You see, out of four

counsellors, probably only one knew something about law. That was
Tiao. He was a Chinese of Hawaiian descent, who did not know much
Chinese. He went to Cambridge. He was the only one among the
counsellors — the counsellors are supposed to handle legal problems.
So, you asked me who was my boss. My boss was, you may say, the
minister, the vice-minister, and the counsellors. In other words, I
was not directly under them, but when they had a legal problem,
usually the minister would transmit to the counsellors, and if the
counsellors could not handle it, then they could refer it to me for an
opinion. That was the — what do you call it? — line of command. So I
cannot tell you who was my boss. I suppose these three would have
been my boss. But the minister never referred anything to me,
because I was not a substantive post. The routine was to refer to
the counsellors. But, as I said, of the counsellors, probably only
one knew something about the law! [laughs] And he did not know much
Chinese. Anyway, that would be my duty, my position.

In connection with this I would mention one thing. In my time
the Wai-chiao Pu had a legal advisor by the name of [William Culler]

80

Dennis. I do not remember his first name. D-e-n-n-i-s. He was an
American lawyer.

BOG: IB this his first or last name?

Chang: That's his last name, D-e-n-n-i-s. One day. all of a sudden, he
sent me a memorandum he wrote for the Wai-chiao Pu in English and
asked me as if by command for a Chinese translation. I turned him
down flatlyl I said, "You have no business, you have no authority
to ask me to do anything. You are not my boss." So he appealed to
the ministry, and the ministry backed me up, saying I was right. I
regret very much that as a lawyer he did not know elementary
procedure. Suppose he handed his memorandum to the Wai-chiao Pu,
and the Wai-chiao Pu said, "We want to read it in Chinese." you
see, not everybody knew English. And the Wai-chiao Pu would send to
me for a translation; then I would have nothing to say, because I
was employed by the Wai-chiao Pu. But he directly — I said,
"Nothing doing." I remember that instance very well.

BOG: What was his function? Was he an advisor — ?

Chang: He was legal advisor to Wai-chiao Pu. He had no office in the Wai-
chiao Pu. He just rented some sort of a Chinese style living
quarters; that was his office.

BOG: He would be an advisor, say. on international problems?

Chang: I do not know exactly what his contract provided for. But anyway,
he was the legal advisor to Wai-chiao Pu. An American.

Organization £f Legal Affairs Office. Ministry £f Foreign Affairs

BOG:

How was the office organized? You see, in this country you
usually have a secretary and a typewriter, [laughs] Those things
were not available in China in those days. If I rendered an opinion
in Chinese, I had to write it out myself. I could write it in
hsing-shu, running style; then there was a scribe who would copy it,
called lu-shih. They would copy into the standard style, and then
submit it to the authorities. I didn't have that kind of thing. Of
course. I could write in Chinese and ask the lu-shih to put it into
better style. I had no other — it was practically a one-man show,
you see. That's all.

Can you tell me some of the problems that you worked on while you
were working for the Wai-chiao Pu?

81

Chang: Well, my tenure was not long, you know.
BOG: How long?

Chang: Probably less than a year before I went to Vladivostok. You see,
not very long. So I did not help the ministry in handling any of
the big issues. Besides, you see, at that time the Versailles Peace
Conference was not to be held until the next year, and all those
problems, like the Shantung problem, had not yet arisen. So, they
were preparing how to meet that situation when they employed me.
But I do not remember having handled any of those issues.

Politics and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Chang: This question is Peking politics and the Wai-chiao Pu, effects of
factional strife between the An-fu, Chihli, Fengtien cliques, on
the conduct of foreign relations, and the internal functioning of
the Wai-chiao Pu. The Wai-chiao Pu you may say was a continuation
of the Ch'ing Wai-wu Pu, because they emphasized seniority in the
same way. Many of its officials were also from the Ch'ing dynasty.
They went on as ministers or as secretaries, and things of that
kind. So, the Wai-chiao Pu usually was headed by one of the old-
timers, like Lu Cheng-hsiang. Lu Cheng-hsiang was one of the early
students who studied in the foreign language school — I don't know
which one. Maybe the one in Shanghai. There was one in Tientsin;
there was one in Peking. They picked up elementary language
abilities, just language, not really knowledge. From that lowly
beginning, he was sent out as attache and secretary, and finally he
became the minister to St. Petersburg. Lu Cheng-hsian. He was a
very weak, not able, minister. In those days a diplomat prided
himself on not shouldering responsiblity. That was their greatest
asset. That was how they got along in those days. Of course, later
on, men like Yen Hui-ch'ing and Ku Wei-chun were the newer crop of
diplomats. They were American trained.

In all those internal factional fights, whenever one party
gained superiority over another party, usually that party would
reserve to itself the right to recommend ministers or the prime
minister, but they seldom did it with the Wai-chiao Pu. The
minister, or even the lower ranks, were not bothered. So in that
case the Wai-chiao Pu was more or less independent.

BCG: Did they not bother the Wai-chiao Pu because they wanted to maintain
stability?

82

Chang:

BOG:

Chang:

BOG:
Chang:

BOG:
Chang:

They saw it as professional. It had to do with the yang-wu, the
foreigner matters. All they could recommend were those military men
or old Chinese scholars, and they are not fit for that post. So,
the Wai-chiao Pu was untouched. So those few people, they
alternated. One day this one went up, another one went down,
another went up. The selection was limited. So, practically
speaking, internal politics did not affect us. Of course, when
there was a change of cabinet, the new prime minister may say. "Ah,
the old one, you step aside." They would select Wellington Koo.
Next they would select Yen Hui-ch'ing. [laughs] Like that, you see.
So you will have to go directly to find how those things changed.
But anyway, the Wai-chiao Pu usually was more or less independent, I
would say that.

The internal functioning of the Wai-chiao Pu. what do you mean?
What do you want to know about that?

I was primarily concerned with what you have just answered. I was
wondering if factional changes in Peking had an effect on the
general functioning of the Wai-chiao Pu.

I would say one thing. The vice-minister usually was a political
appointee. Not the minister. The vice-minister could be one who
was not well versed in foreign affairs, like William dark of the
Reagan administration, [laughs] So the vice-minister sometimes,
sometimes was recommended by a political party or one of the
military. But never the minister. Because the vice-minister was
supposed to handle the internal affairs of the ministry, not
outside. That's why they could recommend someone for that post.

But this vice-minister, when he was appointed by the new faction —

The old one would be either asked to resign, or he would be
dismissed.

Right. But since he controlled the internal organization, he
wouldn't fire, say, for example, you?

Usually he didn't have the power. The power rested with the
minister. If he wanted to do it, he had to get a concurrence of
minister.

the

BOG: So this change of command didn't really disrupt the functioning of
the Wai-chiao Pu.

Chang: No, no. It didn't interrupt the external affairs of China. It only
affected matters within the ministry, like the budget, like where to
get the money and when to pay the staff, internally, something like
that.

BOG: How were you paid?

83

Chang: I don't quite remember. We were paid in Chinese dollars.
BOG: But was it fairly regular, or were there times when —

Chang: Oh yes. Wai-chiao Pu was regular, because the Wai-chiao Pu, I

think, got its money from the customs. That was the only ministry
which did not owe its staff money. All the others, they owed two
months, three months, like the Peita [Peking University] , like
those teachers and those other ministries. Sometimes five months.
That was very disheartening.

BOG: That's what I was wondering.

Chang: But the Wai-chiao Pu was never short of funds. I understand it got
its money from customs. How it got it, I don't know. Later on when
we come to customs I'll have something to say about the I. G.'s
abuse of power.

Go on?

BCG:

Okay.

Observations on the Anfu Clique's Rule, 1918

Chang: The period of Anfu Clique domination. I cannot answer these two.
It's this way. As I recollect, the permutations of politics in
those days, there were alliances. There was the Chihli hsi.
faction. There was the Wan hsi [Anhwei] faction. There was the
Fengtien hsi [Manchurian] faction. And so on. There were
alliances and counter-alliances, permutations, and so on. Well, no
one can follow it unless you go and read all those documents,
[laughs] But in a general way I would say this: After the death of
Yuan Shih-k'ai, later on he had retreated to become tsung-t'ung
[president] again, with Li Yuan-hung his vice-president. After Yuan
died, of course, Li Yuan-hung succeeded to the presidency. And when
he succeeded to the presidency, I think Tuan [Ch'i-jui] became the
premier. Of course, the two couldn't get along. They had friction.
Then, in 1917, all of a sudden, this pig-tailed general, Chang Hsun,
he led his army in a movement to restore the Ch'ing dynasty. I
think that P'u-i succeeded in becoming for a second time the emperor
for one or two days. I don't remember.

BCG: Very briefly.

84

Chang: I was not back yet. Anyway, for a very short time. Then, that

movement was quashed. But during that restoration period, Li Yuan-
hung, the president, escaped into hiding, probably into the Tung-
chiao-min hsiang. in the legation quarter. When the restoration was
quashed, of course he came back to be president. Feng Kuo-chang was
the original vice-president under Li Yuan- hung. He was elected
under the old constitution. But somehow — I do not remember how or
for what reason — I think Li Yuan-hung was forced to retire to
Tientsin, and the vice-president. Feng Kuo-chang, acted as
president. He was not president. In his capacity as vice-president
he acted as president. At the same time Tuan Ch'i-jui was the
premier. These two men were the chief lieutenants under Yuan Shih-
k'ai. They were called the Pei-yang chun. At that time there were
no such factions as Wan or Chih; there was only the Pei-yang chun.
the northern military, all under Yuan. But they were co-equal. So,
again, of these two men Feng Kuo-chang didn't have great ambition,
but Tuan Ch'i-jui did. Therefore, the two again had frictions. But,
it was not an open fight. They were like two gentlemen. They were
colleagues.

I think at that time, as premier, Tuan's policy was wu-li-
t'ung-i, unification by force, fight the south, quash them, like
what Yuan had done before. In doing so. he had what was called
Ts'an-chan chun. an army named "war participation army," and he
himself was Ts'an-chan tu-pan. In other words, that was before the
end of the European war. He had trained an army to participate in
the First World War. Of course the Allies didn't want him. [laughs]
But anyway, he had that asset.

In order to train that army, he made use of traitors, those
Japanese returnees like Ts'ao Ju-lin. Chang Tsung-hsiang, and Lu
Tsung-yu. to make loans from Japan. By the millions. And he bought
Japanese weapons to equip his own army. He was building up his own
military strength. His policy was wu-li. unification by fighting.
Of course he didn't himself — he was a Ts'an-chan chun. After the
end of the war, things had to change. No more war. So his army was
changed in name, but not in substance, into Pien-fang chun, TJorder
Defense Army." It was change in name, not in substance! [laughs]
So he used that pretext to borrow money from Japan, to buy Japanese
weapons, to try to enlarge his military strength. He himself had no
other army to fight the South. In order to fight the South, he had
to get Ts'ao K'un and Wu P'ei-fu to do it. Of course, when Wu P'ei-
fu reached Hengchow (this is the skeleton, you know. I don't mean
that this is the whole thing). I think he got in touch with the
Southern generals. He favored stopping the internal fighting and
talking about peace. To have some understanding.

So. after reaching Hai-yang chen, he stopped his advance. Not
only stopped his advance, he issued a scathing telegram criticizing
Tuan's policy. And. finally, without Ts'ao K'un's authority or the
government's authority, he announced, "I am returning north." So

85

finally he went to Loyang as the Ti-san-szu chang. as the divisional
commander of the third division.

My chronology may not be correct, but at that time Feng Kuo-
chang was acting president, and Tuan Ch'i-jui was the premier. Both
were military men. But Feng Kuo-chang was more or less inclined
towards the idea of stopping the war and trying to negotiate for a
peaceful settlement. And Tuan. you see, was not. Again we have a
situation like the conflict between the presidential form and the
cabinet form of government. That was the old constitution. So
there was bound to be conflict of interest, conflict of authority.
Again, the two could not get along quite well. Of course, there was
no open break. So. Tuan. or the Anfu clique which supported Tuan,
conceived of the idea to call for a new election of the new national
assembly, which has been called the Anfu Kuo-hui. because it was
engineered by the Anfu clique. They say it was rigged and bought
and so on, but of those things I do not know the inside story.
Anyway, the Anfu Kuo-hui was called by Tuan. Why? Because Feng
Kuo-chang's acting presidency would expire very soon; upon its
expiration, he wanted the Anfu Kuo-hui to elect a president. That's
how he chose Hsu Shi-ch'ang. Hsu Shi-ch'ang was what you may call
an elder statesman, who had served the Manchu dynasty in high
places, served Yuan Shih-k'ai, and so on. He was an old-fashioned
Hanlin scholar. And respected. He did not belong to any party. He
was respected as a scholar, as an official. So he was duly elected.

When he was duly elected, Tuan thought he could make use of Hsu
Shih-ch'ang as a puppet, as an instrument, to carry out his policy
of unification by force. He thought so. But [laughs] Hsu Shi-
ch'ang was a well-seasoned statesman, not so easily made use of by
Tuan. He was a scholar. A scholar is never quick to use force,
like Reagan wants to use force to settle everything, but Reagan is
no scholar, [laughter] He was also more or less inclined towards
the idea of reconciling northern and southern factions, but he could
not openly do it because his boss was Tuan. Tuan had him elected.
So he had to walk a tightrope. He had to maneuver how to appease
all factions. He had no power, except his position as the elected
president, [laughs] I think that was the situation.

Later on he responded to the general opinion of the country and
most of the generals, south and north, by opposing military
unification and fighting among the various warlords. Especially
when Tuan borrowed money from Japan and bought Japanese weapons and
so on. That created a lot of suspicion on the part of the general
public. I suppose that general feeling had influenced Hsu Shi-
ch'ang to declare an armistice, no fighting between north and south.
"We'd better negotiate." Nan-pei hui-i. the north and south
conference, was held in Shanghai [in 1919], but they could not agree
or resolve the conflicts. I think the basic problem was that the
south wanted to restore the old parliament that had been dissolved
by Yuan Shih-k'ai in 1915. But. if they restored that. Hsu Shi-

86

ch'ang's position was threatenedl [laughs] He had troublel So
the northern position was that they could not discuss the Anfu
parliament, because if they discussed the Anfu parliament. Hsu Shi-
ch'ang's position would be threatened. So, on that difficult
subject, the Nan-pei hui-i in Shanghai, it floundered — no results.

Meanwhile, Tuan Ch'i-jui, with his lieutenant Hsu Shu-cheng,
was continuing to expand the Pien-fang chun. Hsu Shu-cheng was
called a genius; but he was an evil genius, you know. He had a lot
of intrigues and so on. He was the chief advisor to Tuan on
military affairs. Well, at this juncture [early 1920], for the
first time, the Chihli and Fengtien factions worked together.
Because the Pien-fang chun was north and west of Mukden, Chang Tso-
lin's circle of influence. So, the Fengtien faction was afraid
that if the Pien-fang chun should be well trained and well supplied
and well established, probably it would limit their expansion. It
would be detrimental to Chang Tso-lin's interest. So, for the first
time, the Fengtien and the Ts'ao K'un's clique joined together to
fight the Wan [Anhwei clique] of Tuan, The Pien-fang chun was then
badly defeated by Wu P'ei-fu [in July 1920]. I think he captured
one of their generals.

BCG: Yes. he did.

Chang: So that ended Tuan's career as a military chief. 1 think after that
it would be 1921. Come 1922, after Tuan failed in his wu-li-t'ung-
i, there would be another war between the Fengtien and the Chihli
factions. We'll talk about that next time.

I have not studied these agreements, the agreement that Tuan
signed through Ts'ao Ju-lin, those that they call traitors.

BCG: I put this in here just in case there was something that you
remember from your Wai-chiao Pu experiences.

Chang: Yes. By the way, have we talked about the Wu-szu Yun-tung [May
Fourth Movement]?

BCG: Not yet.

Chang: Okay, then we'll come to that later on. Okay. Oh. [laughs] this is
what you may call a sham, [laughs] It was this way —

87

"Lectureship" at National Peking University. 1918

BOG: Oh, your lectureship.

Chang: Yes, my lectureship. You see. I had an old friend whom I had not
seen for the seven years I was in America. He was secretary to
Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, the president of Peita. One day I called on him
just to renew our old friendship. After my visit, it happened Ts'ai
Yuan-p'ei was at that time in his own office, so my friend Hsu Pao-
huang suggested that I call upon him. I said. "I don't know him."
He said, "It doesn't matter." So he introduced me to his boss,
Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, and he received me. We had a talk. He knew that I
had just returned from America, where I studied law. That's all.

A few days later he sent me a letter. Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei,
appointing me to a lectureship on law without specifying which
branch of law or what kind of law I should teach, [laughs] That's
the way they did thingsl Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei was a scholar, an old-
fashioned Hanlin scholar. He was very liberal. He had gone to
Europe for a time. He treated all schools of thought, all factions,
equally. Every school of thought, every ideology, really learned
men of any persuasion, he welcomed them to the Peita. That's why
Peita was the place where the Communist Party had its origin. He
was so liberal, [laughter]

Anyway, when I got that letter appointing me to that post, I
was really puzzled. I found it rather difficult. If he had
specified what subject I should teach, I could easily have made a
decision. But he didn't. And I didn't want to teach common law
because common law was based on precedents, and judges' decisions,
which at that time would not apply in China. It was no use for me
to teach a branch of common law or criminal law or property law.
Even now America doesn't use it. [laughter] No use. I said,
international law I have an interest in, and I had studied enough so
that I believed I could teach fairly well. But the difficulty arose
in this way: there was no Chinese textbook on international law. I
did not want to use either an American textbook, at that time it was
Wilson's, or use the Oxford professor's textbook. Professor Moore
at Columbia, his was not a textbook, rather it was called a digest
of international law, just a compilation of cases. I did not want
to use foreign textbooks. Because, anyway, you had to teach them in
Chinese. That meant for each lecture, I had to write the thing out
in Chinese. I had to translate those international law terms into
acceptable Chinese. And I had no experience at that. I was just
coming back. I thought this was too much of a preparation. It was
too hard to handle. So, after a short while, I just resigned. In
that sense, you may say it was a sham. I never did anything.

BOG: No lectures or anything?

88

Chang: No. no. Never anything, [laughter]

BOG: All of your biographical accounts in Who's Who and things all say
that you had a lectureship at Peking University.

Chang: That was — what do you call it? — your personal record, your vitae.
It's not false! It's there, [laughs] I could have taught
international law if in English, but I did not want to go to the
trouble because there were no Chinese reference books. You've got
to have a library so you can translate all those terms. I could not
translate all those terms in a way acceptable to everybody all
around. That would take some years to do! That's why I gave it up.
Of course, if 1 made up my mind to teach that difficult thing, I
could do it. It would just take time. But since my idea never was
to teach, but to be active, like working to do away with extra
territoriality, that was my ambition. So I didn't pursue it.
Besides, a lectureship is not a professorship. It's less than a
professorship. You do, however, have the opportunity to lecture to
students.

BOG: What was Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei like as a person?

Chang: He was rather thin and not impressive as a personality. But the

main thing was that he was quite liberal. He tolerated every school
of thought.

I was going to show you — do you remember my calligraphy?
BOG: Yes.

Chang: I have a letter from him.
BOG: I'd like to see that!

Chang: He recommended one of his relatives to me for employment. That

young man was a graduate of Ching Hua. I did give that fellow an
appointment. That was a letter I kept.

So the lectureship has nothing to do with Wai-chiao Pu. It was
quite separate.

BOG: Okay, [laughter]
Chang: Nothing! [laughter]

89

Observations on the May Fourth Movement

Chang: [Reading from outline] Comments on student activism; for example,
protests over Sino-Japanese Military Mutual Assistance Conventions
in March, 1918.

BOG: This was in conjunction with your lectureship, but if you have
something to say about it, go ahead.

Chang: Well, you see, I didn't have any direct contact with the activist
students, but I do know, because this was 1918, before the
Versailles Treaty, that at that time there was a strong feeling
among the progressive activist students, as well as among the
commercial chambers of commerce of all the chief cities, and among
some of the enlightened generals. They were dead against Tuan's
borrowing money from Japan and signing these military agreements
with Japan and buying Japanese equipment. They were against that.
They called that mai-kuo, selling out the country. So there was
already a ferment, but that had not yet come to the fore, not yet
focused, not until Wu-szu [May 4th]. We'll talk about that later
on.

BOG: Okay.

Chang: Or talk about it now?

BOG: If you want to talk about Wu-szu Yun-tung now, go ahead.

Chang: Okay. We're going to talk about Wu-szu Yun-tung now. So why Wu-
szu. why the 4th of May? You see. May 7th [1915] was the date on
which Yuan Shih-k'ai was forced to sign a modified form of the 21
Demands. The student body in Peking, not only in Peita but also in
several other universities and normal schools, banded together and
said: We must remember kuo-ch'ih. the 7th of May — that was the date
that was signed. Like Roosevelt said, a "day of national infamy,"
kuo-ch'ih. They planned to remember it by holding a big
demonstration in the central park. But on the 3rd of May they got
the news from the Versailles Conference that China's claim to have
German rights [in Shantung] transferred directly to China after the
war failed, because Wilson found out there was a secret agreement
between Japan, France, and England that after the war those rights
would go to Japan instead of back to China. When they learned that
news, they said, "We must t'i-i-chien [make a criticism], we must
hold our demonstration, not wait until the 7th. So on the 4th they
held a big demonstration at the T*ien-an men [Gate of Heavenly
Peace]. The T'ien-an men was only a few blocks from the central
park. Of course, there were many slogans, like "Punish Those Who
Sold-out the Country," mai-kuo-tse, "Demand the Government Not Sign

90

BOG:
Chang:

BOG:
Chang:

BOG:

Chang:

BOG:

the Versailles Treaty." and so on. Of course, they opposed Tuan's
making military agreements and loan agreements with Japan.

From there they began to march to Chiao-min hsiang. and they
were stopped. You see, Chiao-min hsiang translates as the
legation quarter, [laughs] They were stopped. So, finally they
came back to Wang-f u-ching ta-chieh [street], and then they said,
"We must go to find Ts'ao Ju-lin, kuo-tse, the national traitor. So
they went to Chao-chia-lou street in the eastern part of Peking.
When they got there the main gate was locked and bolted. They
couldn't get in. Finally, when they did break in, they couldn't
find Ts'ao Ju-lin. I think, meanwhile, Ts'ao Ju-lin fled through
the back door. So, someone put the house on fire. It did not all
burn down, but they put it on fire. And they did find Chang Tsung-
hsiang there, and they beat him up. Chang Tsung-hsiang was China's
minister to Tokyo, so they considered him one of the traitors.

After that, I think, Hsu Shih-ch'ang's government became shaky,
because that was not only a Peking student movement, it spread to
student bodies in Shanghai, Nanking, and so on, and also to some of
the commercial organizations. So, the general public, as well as
the students, were all in favor of the students' demands. Finally
Hsu Shih-ch'ang issued a directive to the Chinese delegates to the
Versailles treaty not to sign. That's what happened.

What were you doing on May 4th?

I was watching from the sidelines. I didn't participate. Of
course. 1 didn't actually see it, but 1 read about it. I felt good
about it. I felt that gave them their due.

You were in Peking at the time?

Yes, I was in Peking. After that, you see, I went to Vladivostok,
It must be the winter of 1919. I don't remember the exact date.
We'll come to that.

All right.

High Commission in Siberia.

Hold on one second and I'll flip the tape over.

91

Chinese High Commission in Siberia, 191 9##

Chang: When the Communists gained power in Russia, during the First World
War, they practically took Russia out of the fight, so Japan
proposed to America, Britain, and France that she wanted to send an
expeditionary force into Siberia, to prevent communism from
spreading over the entire area, something like that. Of course,
Wilson at once saw that Japan was such an aggressive nation, and if
he allowed Japan to do it alone, Japan would possibly gobble up
Siberia. So he said, "We are allied nations; if you want to do it,
we will do it together." Japan could not say no, so they agreed.
That is why America, England, France, China, and Japan each sent a
high commissioner. It was not a commission composed of many people.
It was something like an informal legation or ministry. China also
sent a cruiser, which stayed in the Vladivostok harbor. America had
some kind of gunboat, and I did meet a Maj or-General [William S.]
Graves, who was commanding that boat in Vladivostok.

I did not ask for this job. The Chinese high commissioner
appointed was a man by the name of Li Lan-chou. He was a career
Chinese diplomat of the old school. That is, he had learned
Russian. He knew only Russian, [laughter] I had never met him
before I joined the commission. He had heard about me, so he
approached me, if I would like to go with him to Vladivostok? I was
itching to do something active! I didn't want to stay in the b_u
[department] like I had been. I immediately accepted.

So, I was his only English secretary. He had a Chinese
secretary and one or two others, advisors, but I was his only
English-speaking secretary. The Japanese commissioner was
Matsudaira, who later on became ambassador to London, to the Court
of St. James. The British, Sir Miles Lampson. The American, I don't
think he was a high commissioner, but at that time America was
represented by a man by the name of [C.H.] Smith. I don't remember
his first name. He didn't look to me like a diplomat, [laughter]
And, also, there were the French. In all our meetings, of course,
English was used instead of French. So, I was both secretary as
well as interpreter for my boss. I had to interpret what they said
to him and what he said to them. I was in that position, a very
pivotal position, you may say. [laughs] I was not the high
commissioner, so I could not make decisions. I was the pivot,
that's all. It was not organized like a regular legation, where you
had an attache, first, second or third secretary, it was not
organized that way; I was the only English secretary.

One thing here I would like to mention, in memory of the French
high commissioner. I am sorry to have forgotten his name. I
remember all the others except his. Upon his departure from
Vladivostok, he presented to me his treatise in French on

92

international lav. The reason was this: one day when I was visiting
him at his office I saw that book, so I asked him where it was
published. Of course. I had not studied French, butl intended to
study French. That's why I asked where it was published. I
intended to buy one. I didn't say that; I just said, "Where was
that published?" So he remembered that, and upon his departure he
gave me that two-volume book. So I wanted here to remember him. I
forgot his name.

BOG: Okay. Do you remember anything of what went on in the sessions that
you were — ?

Chang: Well, my memory is hazy, you see, because I do not know Russian. I
could not read the Russian papers, and I was not informed of the
details. I only knew there were the Bolsheviks and the old-time
generals. Some of the old-time generals were still holding the
territories and not yielding them to the Bolsheviks. And also.
there was a Gaida, Czech division. I think they wanted to return
home to fight, but somehow the Bolsheviks were trying to prevent
that. And there was some fighting between them. I don't know
details.

One night there was a coup d'etat by the Japanese. , They sent
their military men and occupied many of the buildings. So the next
day, the commissioners held a meeting and asked why, and finally
Japan had to give that up.

BOG: This coup d'etat. You mean the Japanese — ?

Chang: The Japanese without notice. During the night time they sent out
military men and occupied many of the buildings.

BOG: This was in Vladivostok?
Chang: Public buildings.
BOG: In Vladivostok?

Chang: It was like an occupation. So, the next morning the commissioners
held a meeting and asked them to explain. Finally, Japan yielded.

BOG: In the meetings at which you acted as interpreter, were these
meetings negotiations — ?

Chang: The five high commissioners.

BOG: Were these meetings concerned with what they should do jointly with
regard to the Siberian intervention?

Chang: They hadn't agreed on any plan to oppose it. They just first wanted
to know why Japan did it, what was their intention.

93

BOG: But on other occasions when you would meet, what were the functions
of these meetings?

Chang: I don't remember. There were no big problems discussed. Of course,
there was another technical mission [Inter-allied Railway Committee]
to run the railway, appointed by the five powers. China had a
representative on that technical commission, which had to do with
how to maintain transportation on the Russian railway.

Here I want to mention one thing. Along with sending troops
and a naval contingent to Vladivostok, a few vessels of the Chinese
navy, besides the one stationed in Vladivostok, were proceeding
along the Amur River to Harbin. Harbin was on the Sung-hua chiang
[River]. Before they reached Harbin, they were sailing along the
Amur River and they were stopped by the Russians, I forgot the
general's name, on the grounds that China had no right, or at least
a naval vessel had no right, to navigate the Amur River. China
pointed out that the treaty provided China with the right to
navigate it, but the treaty did not say specifically that the navy
could navigate; it only said vessels. It was a little bit
ambiguous. So they stopped it. The Chinese naval force couldn't do
anything; they were not strong enough to fight back.

Meanwhile, they were frozen in and they lacked provisions. You
see, the Amur River is in the north. So the commander of that naval
force in Harbin, he did not approach my boss, but he approached me.
Could I help him? I asked how I could help him? I was only a
secretary. He said, "You know the American representative. Could
you speak to the American representative to see whether he could be
of some help?" So I went to see Smith, and asked if he could do
something. Well, he never told me what he did, but obviously he did
something. I don't know where he got that influence. So, finally,
I got word from Smith that the naval detachments could proceed to
Harbin. So that was one service I did for China at that time,
[laughter]

Also, after — I don't remember, probably either one year or less
than a year, all the high commissioners were withdrawn. I then came
under the consul general in Vladivostok. There was a Chinese consul
general there. So the routine work was carried on by the consul
general. I did not want to be under him, so when that took place, I
said, I wanted to return to Wai-chiao Pu, so I left.

BCG: Why did you not want to be under him?

Chang: You see, he was only a consul general. There was no prospect of any
further promotion or progress. And nothing to do, because all the
commissioners were gone. I was probably the only man in that
office. Nothing anymore to do.

94

BOG: Did you have any contact with or relationship with the government
that was set up by Gregory Semenov?

Chang: No. He was a general, wasn't he?

BOG: Yes.

Chang: He was a White general.

BOG: Right.

Chang: No. no* no.

BOG: You had no —

Chang: He was not in that area, in Siberia. He was more in the west. I
know the name, but I had nothing to do with him.

BOG: No official contact.

Chang: No. So you see, all of these things are suspended midway,
[laughter]

BOG: How did you get up there to Vladivostok, by ship?

Chang: By train. China was part owner of the Chung-tung t'ien-lu, the
Chinese Eastern Railway, part owner with Russia. So. we just
ordered a special car train. In fact, we stayed in the train both
as a dormitory and an office for quite a few months before we could
rent a regular mansion. We later moved into a mansion, but for
several months we stayed in the train. The train was parked on a
siding. Of course, they had hot water and cooking facilities. Li
Lan-chou, the same thing. Before we could find a suitable place to
rent.

How long were you there, a year?

Something like one year. I don't remember the dates. It was Li
Lan-chou who picked me out. I don't know why. I don't know how he
knew me. since we had never met before. You see. in all my past
experiences, I seldom went out to seek a job. They came to me.
[laughter] I was one of the lucky ones. I was lucky, because
the jobs sought me. Also, a suitable job is very hard to find. My
ideal would have been to follow the judicial court from the
bottom up, and when I reached the top. then I'd do something.

BOG: But it didn't work out that way.

Chang: I never had that opportunity. Instead. I did have the opportunity
to handle the customs problem. I think among China's unequal
treaties, customs autonomy and extraterritoriality were the two

BOG:
Chang:

95

biggest problems. The extraterritoriality issue was never solved.
Later on we'll come to that.

BCG: Okay. What did you do in Peking once you came back?

Chang: I was made t'san-shih-shang-bsing-tsou. "counsellor walking."

[laughter] That was an official term, but again not a substantive
post. You see, there were only four. It was very hard to move one
of those substantive post position holders. Once they were
appointed, usually they were not removed unless there was good
cause. So they made me t'san-shih-shang-hsing-tsou. the old term.
Hsing-tsou means "doing duty." I did that.

BCG: Can you tell me anything else in general about Peking at that time,
your life there?

,ife in Peking. Early 1920

Chang: In Peita [Peking University], apart from those professors of

Chinese, practically all the other professors of science and so on
were either European or American trained. So I had a lot of
friends, some of whom were my Harvard friends. In those days in
Peking, many foreigners lived in Peking after retirement. They
preferred to stay in Peking because life was so congenial, so
reasonable. Somehow they couldn't find a counterpart in their
homeland. So, they stayed on.

In those days, I must say I was lucky, in a way, carefree, and
usually almost every night we had a banquet. Somebody gave the
dinner in one of the famous restaurants. There were all kinds of
restaurants, the best in China, mainly offering dishes in the
Shantung, Szechwan, or Kweichow styles, something like that. But,
there were no Cantonese style restaurants. So it was like this.
One fellow gave the dinner. You were invited. Then you felt it was
time for you to give a dinner. You see, you could not always accept
such favors from friends without returning them. In Chinese we call
it li-shang wang-lai. Li means mutual, reciprocal. So, almost
every night I attended a dinner in one of the restaurants. Not only
that, sometimes I got two or three invitations for the same night.
It was then the custom that you should never decline an invitation.
You should always attend. You may be late, but you had to inform
your host that you would be, and so on, and he would understand.
You could be late and sit down for ten or fifteen minutes, and say a
toast, and then leave. That was permissible. But it was not
permissible for you to decline. That's the situation.

96

BCG: You must have been quite well fed.

Chang: Oh yes. But I had this habit: I never overeat. No matter how good
the food, I only ate so much, then I stopped. I could do it all my
life. That's why I'm not fat. [laughter] Oh, of course we had
ma jong parties. You see, I played tennis, but in Peking I had no
place to play tennis, so I rowed. I could not go to the Pei-hai
Park, which was not k'ai-fang [open for public use] to rowing. So
the only thing to do was to take part in majong. [laughter] The
Chinese sin! Like gambling. Well, it's not gambling. It's like
bridge. It's a social game. Of course, whenever a fellow gave a
dinner at his home — you see, you could invite the restaurant people
to go to your home to cook a dinner. A table was usually only about
ten or eight people. And you could have two tables of majong. That
was the only after dinner entertainment, majong.

BCG: What sort of place did you live in?

Chang: At first, immediately upon arrival, I couldn't find a proper place
to live. It was too expensive for me to go to the hotel in the
legation quarter, Wa-kang-li. That was very expensive; I could not
afford it. So, I lived in a dormitory maintained by the YMCA. I
think they were Princeton men who ran the YMCA dormitory. You could
have both Chinese and Western food, usually only for breakfast or
lunch, but not dinner. You had to go to dinner elsewhere. The YMCA
also had a flush toilet. You see, after returning to China, I had
to have a flush toilet. But in China in those days, we didn't have
any. Later on, after my return from Vladivostok, in Chinese we call
it Hai-ts'an-wai, I bought a house from a eunuch next to the central
park, a little to the west of the park. I renovated it. I hired a
contractor and installed hot and cold water, and a flush toilet and
a bathtub. That was the main thing! [laughter] So after I
renovated it, I lived there.

BCG: That must have been quite expensive in those days, to —

Chang: Well, not so expensive. You see, it was a sad thing. When the
Manchu dynasty fell, the eunuchs lost their jobs, so they had to
sell. It was not too expensive. It was only a bungalow. It was
like this [demonstrates on table]: Mine was number eleven, Nanchang
Chieh, Hsi Ta Chieh, right here. I entered here. There was a line
of buildings, a building here, and then in the center here, a
building. Then, here there was a gate, an entryway to the yard.
That was the living quarter, on two sides, and this side was the
main building.

BCG: With a courtyard?

Chang: Yes, a courtyard. Facing the south was the main thing. The central
one, I used that as a majong parlor, [laughter] you know,
entertainment, when you invited people there. And here were the

97

servants' quarters. The kitchen was somewhere here. And here I
made a Yuen-men; I made a gate of brick, round like the moon. That
was my own idea! So, I transformed it somewhat, [laughs]

BCG: So, in this house you had servants and cooks?

Chang: Oh yes. I had a cook and concierge, that is, a men- fang, one who
took your telephone calls or, when somebody came to call, he would
bring in his card for you.

BCG: Like a doorman, sort of.

Chang: Like a doorman. It's called concierge. Is that French?

BCG: Oh, concierge.

Chang: Something like that. I had two servants, one cook, two maids, and a
rickshaw man. Instead of going out and hiring a rickshaw on the
street, usually you hired him by the month. That was better. You
treated him better. You see, in those days, when you went to dinner
parties, the host had to pay food money for the rickshaw man, or if
you were wealthy enough to own a motorcar, you had to pay the driver
food money. So, in that way, if you hired him by the month, he was
entitled to all these extras, [laughter]

BCG: So he could stay well fed. I see. That was better.

Chang: That was the custom.

BCG: Did you live alone in this house?

Chang: Yes, I lived alone in the house. That is, until I got married.

BCG: You didn't get married until later, right?

Chang: I was married in 1923, something like that.

BCG: After you came back from the United States.

Chang: Oh yes, after I came back from Vladivistok, in 1923, something like
that, I was married then.

BCG: Is there anything else that you can remember about Peking at that
time, people you knew or — ?

Chang: Peking was a very interesting place for those who were interested in
antiques, either porcelain, seal carving, or Sung pan, that is,
books published during the Sung dynasty. It was a very interesting
place to collect those things, because it was the place where those
things were concentrated. Also, it was a place where you could find
the writings or calligraphy of some former calligrapher, not too

98

ancient, like the Going. There you were most likely to come across
one of their works.

Also, Peking had a lot of ancient landmarks. For instance, the
Chung-yang Kung-yuan was formerly the She-chi-t'an, a part of the
Imperial Palace where they worshipped the god of the earth, called
She-chi-t'uan. Originally, it had no peony. Well, one year a
general from my province, Shantung, he brought a lot of peonies — you
see, Chinese peonies are perennial, not annual — from Ts'ao-chou fu.
Ts'ao-chou fu in Shantung is the place which produces peonies. He
brought a lot of them as a present to Ts'ao K'un. But Ts'ao R'un
was then under siege by Feng Yu-hsiang. He couldn't accept them,
because if he accepted them, he had nowhere to plant them. So,
instead, they sold them to the Chung-yang Kung-yuan, and they
planted them. Now I suppose it is quite a sight, if you happen to
be there in the month of May or June, the peonies.

There was also a temple outside Ch'ien-men. I forgot the name.
There, they had a noted peony called Black peony, very famous. It
was a few hundred years old. Its flower is black. I did go there
once to see it and drink tea, but I cannot remember the name of the
temple.

So in Peking there are a lot of places you can go and see — for
instance, like the Kuo-tze-chien, that is, temple of Confucius.
There you had the Shih-wu-ching, the classics carved on stone, two
thousand years old. All the people who obtained the chin-sbih
degree and so on, their names were all on the tablets in the Kuo-
tze-chien. There were all sorts of places of interest, either
historical or literary, many such places. If you dug, you would
find all these things there. Not only that: Crickets, you know.
Not the game. Crickets. And you could buy Ming dynasty containers
made of tile, you know. To keep the crickets in. I had a friend
who did that, [laughs] So, Peking was a place for antique
searching, antique- loving people. It was a pastime.

BCG: Did you begin your calligraphy collection when you were in Peking or
earlier?

Chang: Yes and no. I was beginning to have some. Then, later on, I

expanded it. Of course, the T'ien-t'an, the Altar of Heaven, it's a
famous place. It's very inspiring. When you go there to see it,
it's really inspiring. That big thing you see in the pictures in
America, that tall thing, you know, it's remarkably in balance, but
that is not the Altar of Heaven. That is called Ch'i-nien tien.
Ch'i-nien means praying for a good harvest. Ch'i-nien tien [hall].
The Altar of Heaven is a circular terrace, built of white marble.
That is where every winter solstice, the emperor would go straight
from the palace through Wu-men (Wu-men is before Tien-an men),
straight to T'ian-t'an, stay there overnight, and worship heaven on
that altar by sacrificing niu [ox], vang [goat], and chu [pig].

99

BCG:
Chang :

BCG:
Chang:

BCG:
Chang :
BCG:
Chang :

BCG:
Chang:

BCG:

Chang:

BCG:

That was where the emperor worshipped heaven for his subjects,
[laughs] In a way it was very interesting, because, after all, if
you want to know something about the past, there you can see
actually the vestiges of the past.

In those days were you able to go into the Imperial Palace?

Yes. After the abdication of the Hsuan-t'ung Emperor, only part of
the palace was reserved for him to preside over; the rest was open.
So I did go in to see the Imperial Palace, but in those days you
didn't see much. For instance, you went in and you went first to
the T'ai-ho-tien, Chung-ho-tien, or Yung-ho-tien, something like
that, those three big halls. The T'ai-ho-tien was used on a big
occasion like the accession to the throne by the new emperor, or for
entertaining the Mongolian nobles once a year. Those functions took
place at the T'ai-ho-tien. I think the Yung-ho-tien was a place
where the emperor presided over the last examination of the scholars
who were going to get their chin-shih degrees. So all these things
had a historical memory. There it was; you could see it. You not
only read about it, you saw it. [laughs]

At that time I guess, also, there was no T'ien-an-men Square,
the pus [Imperial Boards]

All

No, no, no. In those days, I remember, on both sides of the square
were situated the liu-pu. the six boards of the ministries. But now
they are all gone, cleared away.

Right. Now it's the Great Hall of the People and things like that.
Cleared away. The 1 iu-pu ' s offices were on either side.
Where was the Wai-chiao Pu?

Wai-chiao Pu was situated inside the Tung-tang-tsu hu-t'ung, on the
eastern part of the city. Not too far north, near Tung-tan t'ai-lu.
It was the old Wai-wu Bu which was situated there.

The same place that used to be the Tsungli Yamen?

I think that was the Tsungli Yamen. But to the south, across the
street, there was a building called Ying-ping-kuan. Ying-ping-kuan
was a guesthouse, like Blair House. They later on used that western
building as the Wai-chiao Pu.

The building is still there. When I was in Peking I tried to see it.
Yes. That was built by a foreign architect, I believe.
Yes, it's got columns.

I

100

Chang: Yes. Foreign architect. Then they gave up the old part, the Tung-
tang-tsu hu-t'ung. That old place, they gave it up to use that Ying-
ping-kuan. Whether the present foreign offices are there, I don't
know.

BCG: No, they aren't. Now there is an apartment building right in front
of it, and they won't let you go in and see it. When I was in
Peking I tried to see it.

Chang: I know. You see, these Communists are stupid. They are ignorant.
What's the objection to having people see this? When I was in
Shanghai and later, when I vent to Chefoo, I could not even visit my
old homes. The navy had enclosed it. In Shanghai it vas not the
navy, but the pao-pi. probably intelligence. I didn't want to go
into the home; I just wanted to see the garden. I planted many
flowers. Stupid. They are stupid and ignorant. That's all I can
say.

BCG: Do you remember the house that you had — ?

Chang: Where?

BCG: In Peking. What was the address again?

Chang: Number eleven Hsi Ta Chieh, West Big Street. Nanchang Chieh.

BCG: Next time I'll bring a map.

Chang: Here was the central park. T'ien-an-men was here; Central Park

here. Right here was the Nan-shih-tzu, Nanchang Chieh, going that
way. And this way was the Hsi Ta Chieh, right here. Number eleven.

BCG: Okay. Just for curiosity I'd like to look it up.
Chang: [laughs] Well, it no longer belonged to me.

When I left Peking for Shanghai, though I was working at
Nanking, a friend of mine acted as my agent, and I rented it out.
One day when I was in Peking, I tried to visit. Well, terrible,
terriblel They had used newspaper, old newspaper, and plastered it
onto the windows to make it opaque. Some of the tiles were broken.
I asked him what was happening. He said it is Chang Hsueh-liang's
secretary who rented it. Probably his children went upstairs, went
to the top of the roof and broke the tiles. And he was an opium
smoker. That's why he wanted the darkness, [laughter] I said,
"Well, now, I'd better sell it." So I sold it. If someone wants
it, I will sell it at a reasonable price. So I sold it.

BCG: Do you remember how much you sold it for?

101

Chang: I don't remember. Probably five thousand. I don't know. Less than
ten thousand. But at that time it was a good price. It was not a
big mansion, you know, it was average. I sold it.

BOG: Anything else?

Chang: Okay. Let's call it quits.

[On September 6, 1983, before the next scheduled interview, Mr.
Chang died. Additional information on his career has been added
from his written records and from previously recorded conversations
with him. ]

102

THE REFORMATION OF THE CHINESE CUSTOMS
A Memoir*

A Note on How ^ Joined the Revolutionary Forces

I attended the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference which was held
in the winter months of 1921-1922 as a secretary in the Chinese delegation.
It ended in February 1922. after which I returned to China.

Passing through Shanghai on my way to Peking, I called on my friend Kao
En-hung, who was a friend and advisor to Wu Pei-fu, the commanding general
of the Chili military faction with headquarters in Lo Yang. Kao told me Uu
had big plans for the reorganization of the government at Peking and advised
me to go to call on Wu and report to him on the Washington Conference.

After returning to Peking to report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of my resumption of duty, I took the trip to Lo Yang. I was received by the
general with cordiality, but he was not much interested in the Washington
Conference, a product of which that concerned China most was the Nine Power
Treaty. He talked at length of the impotence of the government at Peking,
what a bad influence the Manchurian faction headed by Chang Tso-lin was. his
grand design to reunify the country by reconvening the dissolved two houses
of the Chinese National Assembly, and the restoration of Li Yuan Hung as the
legitimate president.

I listened with respect but made no comments, for I was in no position
either to criticize or make recommendations. After staying three days at
Wu's headquarters, I returned to Peking.

Wu Pei-fu though a general had a classical education and was a hsiu-
t'sai, having obtained his first degree in the national classical
examinations. He was an incorruptible and enlightened general as compared
with those warlords who rose from the ranks. He came from the district of
P'eng-lai in Shantung province which lies in the same prefecture as the
district of Fushan. from which I came.

Soon after the civil war broke out between the Chihli military faction,
whose real head was Tsao Kun but whose operative fighting general was Wu
Pei-fu, and the Manchurian military faction, respectively known as the Chih
hsi and Feng hsi. The Manchurian faction was easily defeated and its
influence in politics for the time being eliminated. As a consequence a new
Cabinet was formed in Peking, members of which were either nominated by Wu
or persona grata to him.

*Written by Mr. Chang about 1975. Mr. Chang refers documents in his
possession. These documents have not been located.

103

My friend Kao En-hung became the Minister of Communications and he
selected me as the Director of the Marine Department of the Ministry.

In November of 1922 I was on a visit to Shanghai on official business
for the Ministry of Communications. I called on my friend of Harvard days,
T. V. Soong. His brother-in-law, Sun Yat Sen, whose revolutionary dreams
had all but been dashed and ostensibly in retirement was also living at the
time in Shanghai.

I have never been a revolutionary in my life, and have never joined the
Kuomintang or any other party. However, Sun was a famous revolutionary and
I had a natural desire to see him in the flesh and find out what sort of a
person he was. So I asked T. V. Soong to find out whether it would be
agreeable for Sun for me to pay him a call. In due course I was ushered
into his presence at his home on Rue Moliere in the French Concession.

At the interview I did not say much and left the talking to him. The
essence of his talk which still reverberates in my mind was that I should
not be a mandarin but should engage in revolution. I was not impressed.
Nevertheless I brooded over this interview. A thought came to my mind. It
was this. No matter how good his revolutionary principles were, there was
neither the possibility of organizing a general election to have those
principles adopted by popular support, nor had he the military backing to
have them imposed from above. Therefore I thought if Sun's political
leadership could be brought into cooperation with Wu Pei-fu's military
power, there would be good reason to expect China finally united under a
constitutional government. However, I had no idea whether such a
cooperation between the two would be agreeable to each other. I must first
find out Sun's attitude and then broach the matter with Wu.

So I told T. V. Soong my proposed plan and asked him whether he would
make an appointment for me to see Sun and discuss the matter with him. A
day later Soong informed me he had made the appointment and Sun Yat Sen was
to see me on a certain date (probably December 29, 1922). To my great
surprise on the morning of that very date Soong came to my hotel to tell me
the appointment was called off with no explanation offered. In the
circumstances I asked also no questions, because any questions would be
useless. On the same day I left Shanghai for Peking as scheduled.

An event occurred in March, 1923, in Shanghai which caused me to
reflect and might throw some light on the reason Sun Yat Sen called off the
appointment to which he had agreed. It was the announcement of the joint
Joffe and Sun Yat Sen communique. Though it declared that socialism (I
forgot the exact phrase used) was not suitable to China, it became known
later that Soviet Russia had agreed to grant military and political
assistance to China, and Sun had accepted such aid and had agreed to
cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party, whose members night also become
concurrently members of the Kuomintang.

It seemed reasonable to conclude that when Sun made the appointment to
receive me, he had not reached agreement with Joffe and that he was at least

104

ready to explore the possibility of cooperation with Wu Pei-fu. It also
seemed that when he called off the appointment, the die was cast.

It is for historians to determine whether this event had not decided
the course of China's future history for years, if not centuries, to come.

Not long after this event took place I received a coded message from I.
V. Soong informing me he was accompanying Sun Yat Sen to Canton where a
revolutionary government would be organized, there would be great
opportunities and urged me to go down south to join them. At that time I no
longer was the Director of the Marine Department but became President of the
University of Communications at Peking. I had only been reluctantly
prevailed upon to accept this position a short while before, after a student
revolt which had ousted my predecessor. I declined T. V. Soong's invitation
on two grounds: (a) I could not honorably resign and take leave of the
University in the circumstances, and (b) to engage in revolutionary
activities was distasteful to me. However, I only gave the former as the
reason for my inability to join Sun's government.

Three years elapsed when the world was rudely awakened by the fact that
the Nationalist Government's forces in their march northward from Canton had
swept away all the opposing forces, reached Hankow and seized and occupied
without formality the Foreign Concessions at Hankow. The government was a
coalition between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party patterned after
the Soviet Russian system with the party controlling the policy of the
Government. Borodin and General Galen were the political and military
advisers respectively of the government.

While the Nationalist Government was consolidating its position at
Hankow and preparing for its next move northward, the government at Peking
was ruled by Chang Tso-lin exercising authority as Generalissimo. Towards
the end of the year 1926 I again received a message from T. V. Soong at
Hankow asking me to go down to see him. I proceeded in January 1927 from
Peking by rail to Nanking and then by boat to Hankow.

Arriving at Hankow in January 1927, I called on T. V. Soong, Minister
of Finance of the Nationalist Government. I had not seen him since December
1922 when I left Shanghai. I had also once in 1923 declined his invitation
to join him when he was accompanying Sun Yat Sen to Canton to organize the
government of which he was now a member. After talking things over he
immediately urged me to join and assist him and offered me the post of
Director General of the Customs Administration (Kuan-wu Shu-chang).

While I had never had any inclination towards revolutionary activities
and believed that the government at Peking which was supported by Wu Pei-fu
might lead eventually to a constitutional one, that hope had evaporated by
1927. Li Yuan Hung, the President, had been overthrown by force and given
way to military government ruled by Chang Tso-lin, the Manchurian warlord,
by virtue of his position as Generalissimo. Believing that the Nationalist
Government, though revolutionary in spirit, had a better chance of unifying

105

China and giving her a constitutional government, I accepted Soong's offer
of the post of Director General of Customs.

The government was not only a working coalition between the Kuomintang
and Communists, but was also subject to the influence, through the Communist
Party, of the Comintern (to what extent I did not know). Political
differences and dissensions had already come to the fore. There were in
evidence all over Hankow placards, denouncing the Commander- in-Chief , Chiang
Kai-shek, as a dictator. The labor unions were getting out of hand. The
atmosphere at Hankow was heavy with intrigue and explosive. One evening
T. V. Soong said to me that he was under heavy pressure to declare himself
whether he stood on the side of the Kuomintang or the Communists. It seemed
to me the latter had the upper hand. I told him that if he should declare
himself on the side of the Communists, I would leave the next day.

The Kwan Wu Shu was then not well staffed and did not have much to do.
It had authority to handle all matters connected with the customs, but there
were not that many customs matters to handle. Only the Canton Commission
and the Commissioner of the Hankow customs were in the jurisdiction of
the Nationalist Government. The Commissioner was appointed and removable by
the Inspector General of Customs who was appointed by the Peking Government
and resided in Peking. All the customs revenue collected by the
Commissioner was remitted to the Inspector General. The Nationalist
Government could and would not do anything to change the situation.
However, I did have exchanges of views with the Commissioner about the
future of the customs.

At the time, the only revenue collecting agency that was under the
supervision of the Kwan Wu Shu was the Bureau of Inland Tax (Nei-ti Shui-
chu. That bureau levied a tax of 2-1/2% on all imports which had already
paid the customs duties and been released by the customs. The tax was so
named to distinguish it from the customs duty and because the government
could not order the customs to levy this charge. It was really a customs
surcharge of 2-1/2% and to have called it by its true name presumably meant
that it should have been collected by the customs. This case showed how
little authority the government had over the customs.

When the armies of General Ho Ying Chin and Pai Chung Hsi reached Che
Kiang and Kiang Su provinces, the authority of the Nationalist Government
naturally replaced that of the Peking Government in those provinces as well
as Shanghai. I received orders to proceed to Shanghai as the representative
of the Ministry of Finance to take over whatever agency was under the
jurisdiction of the Peking Government. The only agency was the Shanghai
Customs. The same as the customs at Hankow its Commissioner was appointed
by the Inspector General at Peking. Although the Government did not have
sufficient control over the customs, the latter had functioned well and
efficiently as a revenue collecting agency. I thought it wise not to tamper
with it until a complete plan had been devised to tackle it in a fundamental
manner and reorganize it. Morever, such a plan could not be carried out
before the authority of the Nationalist Government had reached Peking.
Therefore I had not much to do and just waited upon events.

106

After the forces of Ho and Pai had consolidated their control of the
coastal provinces of Che Kiang and Kiang Su, Chiang Kai-shek broke with the
Nationalist Government at Hankow and established a separate government at
Nanking. Some of the Kuomintang elders like Tsai Yuan Pei and Chang Ching
Chiang rallied to and supported him. Its main difference from the Hankow
Government was its policy of Ching Tang, purification of the Kuomintang.
that was, purging the party of the Communists.

Soon T. V. Soong. the Finance Minister of the Hankow Government, came
to Shanghai. He did not resign his post from the Hankow Government, nor did
he join the Nanking Government. At any rate no Ministry of Finance had been
established at Nanking. However, he worked informally in Shanghai to raise
funds for Chiang Kai-shek's army. His effort in this direction neither was
very successful nor did it last long, for Chiang's financial requirements
were so prodigious that in the then prevailing situation no unofficial
fund raiser could have satisfied them.

Meanwhile efforts were being made to bring the two governments together
by composing their differences. The fundamental point was the elimination
of the Communists and the formation of a purely Kuomintang Government. I
remember in midsummer of 1927 I accompanied T. V. Soong to Hankow. He was
acting as an intermediary between the Nanking and Hankow Governments. As I
was not a member of the Kuomintang, nor did 1 hold a position in the high
councils of government. I did not know what constituted the complete terms
of the settlement. However one day I learned the news that Borodin and
Company would leave Hankow, travel overland by motor cars through
territories controlled by General Feng Yu-hsiang, to Mongolia and then to
Moscow. I also learned that Borodin first wanted to leave Hankow by water
through Shanghai and then homeward. But the safe conduct he had asked for
his company from the Nationalist Government had been refused. From this
could be seen how narrow-minded and ungenerous Chiang Kai-shek was, and what
bitterness he had entertained towards his erstwhile Communist Russian
colleagues and advisors.

The amalgamation of the Hankow and Nanking Governments as a result of
the composition of their differences and the purging of the Communists from
the government brought about the establishment of a united Nationalist
Government at Nanking, henceforth to be the national capital of China. This
event marked the final and irrevocable breach between the Kuomintang and
Communist Party and the beginning of the struggle between the two parties
for the control of China.

The new government, however, did not include T. V. Soong as a member or
as its Finance Minister. Hence also I did not resume my office as Director
General of Customs.

Though political differences had been composed, disagreements between
the Commander- in- Chief, Chiang Kai-shek, and the generals existed. Not
possessing sufficient power to prevail over the generals and as a gesture of
retreat, which amounted to saying let you do it and see what would be the

107

result, Chiang relinquished his post and retired to Japan. For several
months the government went on without being able to do anything spectacular,
much less capable of launching an expedition to overthrow Chang Tso-lin's
government at Peking, which the Nationalist Government must do in order to
complete the unity of its rule.

Thus towards the end of 1927 Chiang Kai-shek was recalled and invited
to resume the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Army. When he returned to
Japan and before proceeding to Nanking to assume his post, he divorced his
first wife and married T. V. Soong's third sister, Soong Mei Ling at
Shanghai.

The State of the Customs in 1927

Before the Opium War China's foreign trade was conducted at only one
place. Canton, and foreign merchants were limited to dealing with only
thirteen Chinese Hongs or business establishments. After the war China was
under obligation to open by treaty several ports to foreign trade. Owing to
China's weakness as well as unf amiliarity with the rules of international
trade, she agreed in her first treaty with Great Britain to levy a 5% duty
on imported goods, producing the unprecedented situation of exercising her
authority to tax imports not by virtue of her sovereign right but in
accordance with treaty provisions. Thus China lost her tariff autonomy.
These tariff provisions were extended by virtue of the most favored nation
clause to other countries when subsequent treaties were concluded with them.
The Kuomintang termed and denounced these treaties as unequal treaties.

Faced with the new situation, lacking in knowledge of the usages of
international trade and uneasy about how to deal with foreign merchants, the
Ching Government commissioned Robert Hart (Lay served a short period before
Hart), a British consular agent in China, to organize a customs service to
collect the import duties on foreign goods. The authority so entrusted him
was broad and ill-defined or not defined at all. He was named officially
Chief Commissioner of Customs (Tsung-shui-wu-szu), but he called himself in
English the Inspector General of Customs. He recruited and appointed all
the members of the customs staff and laid down all the terms of their
employment without having to consult the Chinese Government or secure its
approval. In the name of the Inspector General, he promoted, dismissed or
transferred them from post to post as the rules of the service and the
conditions of trade at the different ports required. So long as the customs
revenue was collected and remitted to the government, it left him alone.

While the Inspector General was officially under the jurisdiction of
the Tsung-li Yamen (after 1900 it became the Ministry of Foreign Affairs),
and subject to its direction, the Inspectorate General and Customs Service

108

was not a department of or brought within the operation of any of the
government ministries.

Having received a free hand to organize a customs service. Hart could
have recruited a Chinese staff with English advisers, or he could have
selected a purely English staff with Chinese assistants. However, he chose
to internationalize the service by employing a preponderant number of
British nationals supplemented by nationals of all the treaty powers and
Chinese as translators and clerks. I believe by this dispensation he wanted
to ward off jealousy of the powers which had been vying with each other for
special privileges and rights from China. But by voluntarily offering the
privilege of employment in the customs service to nationals other than
British* he was doing so at the expense of China and was inviting rivalry
and competition between the powers for influence in the service. In later
years the Inspector General had to endure such pressure from the powers,
especially from Japan.

The composition of the customs personnel being as it was. it was
natural that the language used by the service was English. However the
official dispatches between the Chinese Government and the Inspector General
were necessarily in Chinese. All other inter-service correspondence was
conducted in English. So no Chinese had risen under this system to the rank
of Commissioner. The Chinese Secretary of the Inspector General at the
Inspectorate who had charge of the Inspector General's Chinese
correspondence with the Chinese Government was at the late date of 1927 a
foreign national of seniority, although his Chinese dispatches were composed
and written by a Chinese.

The customs service was intended to collect customs duties and to deal
with mainly foreign merchants, but it could not avoid having dealings with
Chinese importers and relations with the local officials. Therefore it was
put behind the protective shield and nominal supervision of the Tao Tai, in
whose jurisdiction the customs lay. The Tao Tai was the intendent of a
circuit having several prefectures under his jurisdiction. When the Chinese
Republic was established and the prefectures were abolished, the Tao Tai
went out of existence and his post was taken over by the Superintendent of
Customs, who was a senior colleague of the Commissioner and had no control
over the latter. The theory was that any problem outside the field of
collecting revenue involving Chinese would be turned over to the
Superintendent for solution.

In the early days the revenue collected by the Commissioner at each
port was handed over to the Tao Tai who banked it in a Chinese bank and
transmitted it to the treasury in Peking. During the Taiping rebellion this
procedure broke down and the revenue was remitted by the Commissioner to the
Inspector General, who then transmitted it to the treasury. However after
the quelling of the rebellion the old procedure was not restored.

After 1895 when indemnities and foreign loans became secured on the
customs revenue, the Inspector General paid the service charges for them
directly from the customs revenue without going through the government. The

109

Inspector General would then remit only the surplus revenue left after these
service charges had been met. This was known as the customs surplus (kuan-
yu), which the government was entitled to. All the revenue from the moment
when it was collected to the time of payment for the indemnity and loan
service charges and before remittance of the surplus to the treasury
remained in the custody of the Inspector General, and deposited in the
foreign British bank, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and not
in a Chinese bank. There was no legal basis or government sanction for this
procedure and was done only by sufferance.

There was no established procedure for the Inspector General to report
the amount of surplus that had accrued to the government or to remit it to
the treasury. The Ministry of Finance was usually in the dark. Oftentimes
when the government was in urgent need of funds an emissary would be sent to
call on the Inspector General to find out when and how much of a surplus
could be expected to be remitted. Thus the Inspector General was popularly
known as the Super Minister of Finance (Tai-shang Tsai-cheng-pu Chang).

In time the Inspector General developed the practice which increased
his own authority and limited that of the Chinese government of referring to
the Diplomatic Corps for consent to the release of the surplus revenue to
the government. This was quite an arbitrary practice which had no legal
basis whatsoever. Its result was that when the government wanted to issue a
domestic loan on the security of the surplus revenue or needed funds for a
particular project, the government was subjected to a possible veto by the
Diplomatic Corps. (I have not tried to find out when this practice began,
but was inclined to believe it started after Hart had left office.) On the
other hand when some agencies (there were more than ten) should have
received the patronage of the Inspector General as beneficial, he would make
grants to them to cover their expenses without reference to the Diplomatic
Corps. Needless to say such practices and irregularities which were without
legal basis grew up because of the government's weakness and lack of will to
challenge them.

Since Hart was appointed by the Chinese Government, he could be removed
by it and a non-British national or Chinese appointed in his stead. However
the British government sought to strengthen its hold on the customs by the
spurious argument that the preponderance of British trade with China
justified the claim that the Inspector General of Customs in the future
should be a British national.

In an exchange of notes between Sir C. MacDonald (British Minister at
Peking) and the Tsung-li Yamen, February 10, 1898, the latter agreed to the
British proposition:

In view of the immense preponderance of British trade
with China over that of other nations, British Government
regard it as vital to the commercial interest of Great
Britain that the Inspector General of Maritime Customs
should in the future be of British nationality.

110

However by 1927 British trade with China no longer occupied first
place. It was surpassed by that of the U.S. A. and Japan. Therefore the
above-mentioned notes should be regarded as void.

There were other contractual restrictions on the mode of
administration of the customs. The loan agreement between the Tsung-li
Yamen and Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and Deutsch Aeiatisch
Bank (March 23. 1896) provides:

Article 7. The administration of the Imperial Maritime
Customs shall continue as at present constituted, during the
currency of this loan.

Again the loan agreement between the Tsung-li Yamen and Hong Kong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation and Deutsch-Atiatisch Bank stipulates:

Article 6. The Chinese Imperial Government undertakes that
the administration of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs
service shall remain as at present constituted during the
currency of this loan.

Growing dissatisfaction with the customs service prompted the Ching
government in 1906 or thereabouts to establish a new agency for the control
of the Inspector General and customs service. The name for this agency was
the Shui Wu Ch'u. Revenue Affairs Bureau. Accordingly, the Inspector
General was removed from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(by then the Tsung-li Yamen was named the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to
that of Shui Wu Ch'u. The Shui Wu Ch'u was not subordinate to any ministry
but an independent agency. The one who presided over it was named Director
General of Revenue Affairs (Shui-wu Tu-pan). His position was one of
cabinet rank and the post was usually filled by an ex-minister, but he was
not a member of the Cabinet.

At about the same time the government established the Customs College
(Shui-wu Hsueh-hsiao) for the training of customs personnel. It was under
the direct control of the Shui Wu Ch'u. Its academic standing was at first
equal to a two-year college but later advanced to full college status. From
then on though the Inspector General's authority to recruit and employ
customs personnel was not interfered with. Graduates of the Customs College
were required by law to be accepted into service by the Inspector General.
However once they entered the service, the Shui Wu Ch'u had no more control
over them. Thus when I assumed control of the customs service in the
beginning of 1927, no Chinese had reached the rank of Deputy Commissioner of
Customs.

Looking back over the years of existence of the Shui Wu Ch'u from 1906
to 1927. one was hard put to see any improvement in the administration of
the customs service, which had been the object of the establishment of that
agency to achieve.

Sir Robert Hart retired soon after the creation of the Shui Wu Ch'u

Ill

The Dismissal of Sir Francis Aglen

When Sir Francis Aglen. the Inspector General of Customs, returned from
furlough abroad and before returning to Peking, he stopped over at Shanghai
and took a trip to Hankow. Believing no doubt he was the arbiter of customs
matters and acting as if he were independent of the Peking Government and
without its knowledge, he entered into discussion with the Nationalist
Government on customs matters. For this ill-advised activity, on the
petition of the Minister of Finance, Tang Erh Ho, Aglen was dismissed from
his post by presidential mandate* on January 31, 1927, while he was still in
the South. On the same date a presidential mandate** appointed A. H. F.
Edwardes as officiating Inspector General.

This was an unprecendented event. In all the history of the customs
the Chinese Government which had never shown any determination to direct and
control the Inspector General who had been left by default to do practically
what he wished, acted this time resolutely to dismiss him not so much for
any violation of the law as for political considerations. Its survival
being uncertain, the Peking Government probably acted in apprehension of
Aglen's conspiring with the Nationalist Government to undermine its
position.

Returning to Peking on February 4, Aglen did not immediately hand over
to Edwardes, but on the 5th called on the Director General of the Shui Wu
Ch'u, Lo Wen Kan,*** saying that his trip to Shanghai and Hankow was solely
for the business of the customs, that it was an injustice to him for the
government to have so suddenly dismissed him, and asking for the annulment
of the dismissal and for permitting him to ask for leave of absence for one
year in order to save his face. Lo Wen Kan in reply said bluntly that
Aglen's conduct at Hankow was grossly improper and that the government had
not acted excessively in his dismissal.****

Meanwhile the British minister. Sir Miles Lampson, made representations
to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on behalf of Aglen, and Edwardes also
made requests to the Shui Wu Ch'u to consider Aglen's "face". On the ground
that should the matter be handled without finesse, complications might
arise; that the prices of the domestic and foreign bonds secured on the
customs revenue had lately been falling; that in consideration of Aglen's

*Shui Wu Ch'u Order No. 83 in Folder No. 5
**Shui Wu Ch'u Order No. 83 in Folder No. 5

***Lo Wen Kan was an ex-minister of justice of the Peking Government.
****Memorandum of the Shui Wu Ch'u, February 11, 1927, to the Prime Minister
in Folder No. 5.

112

services for over thirty years to the customs, the Shui Wu Ch'u decided to
grant Aglen for one year the pay of an Inspector General.*

To show how face was saved and an unpleasant situation rendered
tolerably pleasant, a translation of an exchange of letters between the Shui
Wu Ch'u and Aglen is here appended.

Letter from Shui Wu Ch'u. February 9, 1927, to Sir Francis Aglen:

Your diligence and accomplishment in managing and planning
the affairs of the customs for which you had served for many
years was fully appreciated. Since you had on many occasions
expressed the wish to return to your home country, that wish
was hereby granted to enable you to fulfill your desire.
Considering that your previous accomplishment well deserved
commendation, you would be allowed within one year to continue
receive the emolument that was accorded to an Inspector General
of Customs, thus showing our true appreciation. Henceforth,
should you have any opinion, it would be our hope that you
would communicate it at any time.**

Letter (in Chinese) from Sir Francis Aglen, February 11, 1927. to the
Shui Wu Ch'u:

In respectful reply to your letter (quoting the whole
letter mentioned above) No. 121, I wish to express my sincere
appreciation of the Ch'u's being able to see its way to enable
me to hand over my responsibilities and return to my home
country in fulfillment of original wish. I am also deeply
grateful for the arrangement mentioned in your letter. In
accordance with instructions I have handed over to Acting
Inspector General Edwardes, the management of all matters
pertaining to the customs; all the revenue funds designated
as security for the indemnities and loans; and all matters
pertaining to the amortization of the various domestic loans
which had been entrusted to me by the government. After this
I shall no longer be responsible. However, should the Chinese
Government wish to have consultations. I would be willing to
offer all my experiences and opinions for your consideration.***

*Memorandum of the Shui Wu Ch'u, February 11, 1927, to the Prime Minister

in Folder No. 5.

**Shui Wu Ch'u letter No. 121 in Folder No. 5.
***Aglen's letter, dated February 11, 1927. in Folder No. 5.

113

Though Aglen did not succeed in having the dismissal mandate annulled,
which, even if the Shui Wu Ch'u had wished, it had no authority to do, he
did recoup some lost face and besides having the consolation of receiving
one year's free pay. The matter should therefore be considered closed.
However, he could not get away from the enormity of having lost face. More
than four years after his dismissal Aglen made representations to the
Minister of Finance of the Nationalist Government suggesting that in
connection with the matter of recording the termination of his connection
with the customs service the word dismissal should be replaced with
retirement. Obviously the Finance Minister had no more wish than authority
to alter a presidential mandate issued by the Peking Government. He did not
act on Aglen's letter but sent it to the then Inspector General, F. W. Maze,
to act on at his discretion. Maze's reply to Aglen was that in the future
his relinquishment of the post of Inspector General was to be described as
"retirement" insofar as the customs records were concerned. That was what
Maze could do, but the facts had not been changed. What a travesty the
matter was!*

My Resumption _of the Office £f Director General £f the Customs
Administration**

When Chiang Kai-shek returned, after his self-imposed retreat in Japan,
to the reorganized Nationalist Government, T. V. Soong again became the
Minister of Finance, and I returned to the post of Director General of
Customs (kuan-wu-shu chang). Ex officio I also became the Chairman of the
National Tariff Commission (Kuo-ting-shui-tse Wei-yuan-hui Wei-yuan-chang).

The Shui Wu Ch'u of the Peking Government was an independent agency and
on an equal rank with the other ministerial departments of government except
its head, the Director General of Revenue Affairs (Shui-wu-ch'u Tu-pan), was
not a member of the Cabinet. Its counterpart the Kwan Wu Shu on the other
hand was a department of the Ministry of Finance of the Nationalist
Government. It differed from the other departments in that it had its own
seal of office and exercised independent authority over all matters
pertaining to the administration of the customs. As for matters of public
finance involving the customs such as the issue of loans secured on the
customs revenue and the remittance of revenue to the treasury, they were
addressed to the Minister of Finance.

*Appendix to a confidential letter from Maze to Chang in Folder No. 1.
**I have no record to show the exact date of my assumption of the office,
which was toward the end of 1927.

114

The National Tariff Commission was an independent organization and not
a part of the Ministry of Finance. In the making of the tariff it had to
conduct research and take into consideration the views of other concerned
ministries, the industries, and the mercantile community. But the final
tariff as proposed by the commission was submitted to the Ministry of Finance
for presentation to the Executive Yuan (Hsing-cheng Yuan), which then
transmitted it to the Legislative Yuan (Li-fa Yuan) for enactment into law.

Owing to the fact that the Peking Government had never had tariff
autonomy, it did not have a tariff commission for the making of tariffs.
China was bound by treaty to levy a duty of only 5% ad valorem on imports.
In the case of specific duties, as the value of goods increased in course of
time, such duties became less and less than an effective 5% of value. It
seemed China should have the right to readjust these specific duties to a
full 5% by herself from time to time. But China had to submit to the demand
of the powers that the readjustment of these duties be settled by agreement
with them. This was the kind of abuse of treaty right which China had
tolerated for so long.

In Sun Yat Sen's will he enjoined on his Kuomintang followers to work
for the abrogation of China's unequal treaties. Thus it had been the
Nationalist Government's policy to regain China's tariff autonomy and
recover her control over the customs. In 1927 China enjoyed neither the
former nor the latter. As Director General of the Customs Administration
and Chairman of the National Tariff Commission, it devolved upon me the
primary responsibility for working toward the achievement of these goals.
In my view the recovery of tariff autonomy should be achieved by negotiation
with the treaty powers, but the regaining of control over the customs was a
matter which it was within China's competence and authority to achieve. The
only restrictions on the customs which were legal and binding were the
contractual ones contained in the loan agreements with foreign banks. These
were so vague as to purposely obfuscate. It was my view that so long as the
security on which the loans were made remained unimpaired and the bond
holders' rights were respected, no one had the right to oppose China's
authority over the reform of the customs administration.

At the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Naval Armament on
February 6, 1922, a treaty was signed by the signatory powers for the
revision of China's customs tariff and to enable China to increase her
revenue to meet her needs. This treaty came into force on August 5, 1925.
The treaty provides:

A) A Special Conference shall be called to consider the
interim provisions to be applied before the abolition of likin.

B) It shall authorize the levying of a surtax on dutiable
imports at a uniform rate of 2-1/2 per centum ad valorem,
provided that in case of certain articles of luxury the total
surtax may be increased but may not exceed 5 per centum ad valorem.

C) The Special Conference shall meet in China within three
months after the coming into force of the present treaty on a day
and at a place to be designated by the Chinese Government.

115

Accordingly the Special Conference was called by the Chinese Government and
took place in Peking in the summer of 1925. It was composed of delegates of
all the Powers signatory of the Washington Treaty.

The Conference, after lengthy discussions lasting more than one year.
had agreed that China's imports should be classified into seven groups — from
luxuries to necessities — and that seven grades or schedules of duties should
be applied to them — from 5% to 12-1/2 per centum ad valorem. However, in
view of the emergence of the Nationalist Government in the South which had
extended its control over Wuhan, the Conference suspended its deliberations
without having formalized the proposed schedules of duties. Since these new
duties were negotiated with the Peking Government, they could not be applied
without the agreement of the Nationalist Government. There the matter
rested.

The Nationalist Government's Policy in Deal ing with the Customs during the
Period of Divided Control

By January 1928 the Nationalist Government was in control of sixteen of
the twenty-one provinces of China and of the biggest revenue producing port
of Shanghai. All the revenue collected by the customs under Nationalist
control was as usual remitted to the Inspector General in Peking for the
service of obligations secured on the customs revenue, any surplus remaining
to be remitted to the Peking Government. All the movements of customs staff
were still directed and made by the Inspector General.

The Nationalist Government, however, had access to some customs revenue
known as the 2-1/2 per cent surtax authorized by the Washington Conference.
While at Canton the government levied this tax and called it inland tax
(nei-ti shui), because the Commissioner of Customs could not be made to
collect it. While Shanghai was still under the control of Peking, the 2-
1/2% surtax was collected by the Shanghai Superintendent of Customs, again
because the Commissioner of Customs would not have anything to do with it.
At Shanghai it was called in Chinese "er wu fu chia shui". It would not be
quite correct to say that the Commissioners of Customs would not collect
these surtaxes, because they had to have authority from the Inspector
General to collect them.

Both the Nationalist Government and the Peking Government based their
right to levy the tax on Article III of the Washington Treaty, which says
the Special Conference "shall authorize" the levying of a surtax of 2-1/2
per cent ad valorem. This was a case in point of the Inspector General
taking upon himself to interpret what the law was. He should have carried
out the instructions of the government, the Peking Government, to have the
customs collect this surtax and leave the interpretation of the treaty as a

116

question between China and the powers. As it was he made himself the tool
of the foreign powers instead of the civil servant of the Chinese
Government. That this view was correct was proved by the Powers not having
made an issue of both the Nationalist Government and Peking Government
collecting the surtax by non-customs personnel.

With the customs system operating as it was. the Nationalist Government
had to evolve a policy to deal with it. T. V. Soong agreed with my view that
with China's long term interest, not merely some immediate financial
benefit, in view, the normal operation of the customs should not be
interfered with and the best moment to reform the system would be when the
Northern Expedition, which had been under preparation, had put an end to the
Peking regime. Thus the system could be dealt with as a whole. The reasons
motivating this decision were:

a) Though China's authority over the customs had been eroded, the
customs service had been the backbone of China's national credit, and
on the maintenence of the integrity of the service would depend China's
ability in the future to issue national or international loans.

b) By exercising control over the customs within the jurisdiction
of the Nationalist Government, the customs service would suffer a
break-up which would be a very bad precedent which some future
rebellious government might be tempted to follow.

c) Were the government to force the Commissioner to hand over its
pro rata share of the customs surplus, that surplus would be too small
a sum to justify a rupture of the customs service.

Though the customs service had been left in status quo, the Nationalist
Government nevertheless could not admit the right of any official appointed
by Peking, in this case the Inspector General, to exercise authority in its
jurisdiction. This meant that all incumbent Commissioners of customs and
other members of the customs staff would be allowed to function as usual,
but any transfers and new appointments must have the approval of Kwan Wu
Shu. In this way the Nationalist Government's sovereign right to exclusive
control within its jurisdiction as well as the integrity of the customs
service would be preserved.

As the Kwan Wu Shu could not entertain any official communications from
the Inspector General, the formula adopted by me to achieve this dual
purpose was as follows: the Inspector General should send his list of
transfers and appointments, which were to take place within the jurisdiction
of the Nationalist Government, to the Shanghai Commissioner and tell him to
submit under his signature to the Kwan Wu Shu for approval, after which the
nominees would be notified and they could then proceed to assume their
posts.

While waiting for the political situation to develop, I gave serious
thought to the problem of how to regain control of the customs and then
reform it when the right moment should arrive. To me the key to the whole
problem was to have the right man for the Inspector Generalship. Originally
he was appointed as a Chinese civil servant who should be subservient to

117

Chinese government orders, but he had gone astray and gradually made himself
subject to foreign influence. If the right man should be found, this
problem would be solved. It was as simple as that.

.

In my view, therefore, this man should be an experienced customs
official, who had sympathy with the aspirations of the Chinese people for
regaining control of the customs and for its reform, who would not be
subject to foreign influence, who would cooperate with the Kwan Wu Shu in
carrying out the measures for the reform of the customs service and would
unquestioningly carry out the orders of the government. Once the right man
had been found, the next problem would be how to get the government to
appoint him.

At this time I had not met Edwardes personally. He was a Commissioner
of rather junior rank before being made officiating Inspector General. Since he
was only officiating, the normal expectation or practice would be some time
later to appoint a permanent Inspector General. There was no reason why he
could not be appointed Inspector General by the Nationalist Government, had
it seen fit to do so and found Edwardes the right man to hold the job.
However, the record has shown that when he was Commissioner of Customs at
Canton he closed the post of Canton in 1925 in obedience to the wishes of
the British Consul and defiance of the order of the de facto government of
which Sun Yat Sen was the head. Thus he was subject to British influence.
There was also a strong feeling on the part of some of the Kuomintang
leaders that the Nationalist Government should neither recognize him as
officiating Inspector General nor appoint him Inspector General in the
future. (See letter of Wu Chao Shu, former Minister of Foreign Affairs,
dated January 17, 1928, to Fu Chu, alias Kuo Tai Chi, who transmitted it
to T. V. Soong on January 31, 1928.*) I also have no idea whether Edwardes
would be in sympathy with our desire to reform the customs, or cooperate
with the Kwan Wu Shu.

I was in a good position to acquaint myself with the past record and
attitude towards the customs of F. W. Maze, Commissioner of Customs at
Shanghai. He was a Senior Commissioner and Shanghai was China's biggest
port producing more than 40% of the customs revenue of the whole country. I
found him sympathetic to the aspirations of the Chinese people for the
reform of the customs service and without any record of or present
inclination to being made use of by any foreign influences. He also
willingly cooperated with the Kwan Wu Shu in handling the delicate
situation of a divided customs service. Moreover, he was rather unique in
having received the approbation of the Chinese business community. When the

*Both letters in Chinese in Folder No. 1. Fu Chu was the courtesy name

of Kuo Tai Chi, who was the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs of Shanghai and

later Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

118

Chamber of Commerce and the United Navigators' Association of Shanghai
learned of his scheduled leave, they petitioned the Ministry of Finance to
cancel it and allow him to stay on his job. In reply to this petition the
Kwan Wu Shu. under the order of the Minister of Finance, instructed Maze
that "pending settlement of various important customs matters, he should not
abruptly take leave without proper authorization from Nanking, and should
continue his duties as usual."*

Another Commissioner of senior rank whom I had come across and
discussed customs matters with was Dr. J. W. H. Ferguson.** He was of
Danish nationality, formerly Commissioner of Hankow and in 1928 Commissioner
of Canton. He was a liberal and very much in favor of the reorganization of
the customs service. There was no question that he would cooperate heartily
with the Kwan Wu Shu in carrying out the reforms we had in mind. Moreover,
being a national of a country which was not one of the Treaty Powers, there
would be advantages in having such a man as Inspector General.

Edwardes* Attempt to Win the Nationalist Government ' s Recognition

In the Autumn of 1927 Edwardes sent to C. C. Wu. Minister of Foreign
Affairs of the Nationalist Government, a letter and a copy of a memorandum
which he had presented to the Shui Wu Ch'u of Peking. In the memorandum he
suggested the formation of a "nonpol itical commission" which would be
composed of the representatives of the Treaty Powers and in which both the
Peking and Nationalist Governments would participate. He also stated that
the Peking Government was ready to accept the suggestion.

The purpose of his suggestion was as a first stage the acceptance by
the Powers of the collection by the Customs Service of the existing 2-1/2%
surtax (this being already collected by both governments by noncustoms
personnel), and as a second stage the acceptance by the Powers of an
increase to a flat rate of 12-1/2% of the duty on all imports. This as one
can see was no different from the proposals of the Peking Tariff Conference
which had agreed on the increase but had not taken any formal action owing
to the existence of two governments. What Edwardes really aimed at was his
role as an intermediary in securing the agreement of the Nationalist
Government with the proposals of the Peking Tariff Conference so that the
new schedules of duties could be collected by the Customs Service and the

*English translation of this Order No. 1355 in File No. 1.

**Letter from Ferguson to F. Chang, February 26. 1928 in Folder No. 1.

119

revenue divided pro rata between the two governments. Thus he would have
achieved a milestone in China's struggle for tariff autonomy and won
recognition by the Nationalist Government of his claim to be confirmed as
Inspector General in the event of the final victory of the South over the
North.*

It did not seem C. C. Wu had responded to Edwardes1 suggestion and
nothing came out of it. There was no doubt that Edwardes acted ultra vires,
and did not observe his civil servant status. When Sir Robert Hart acted
for the Chinese Government on diplomatic missions, he did so according to
instructions of the Chinese Government, while Edwardes acted independently
and on his own. After Sir Robert, the Inspector General seemed to believe
he had some sort of international status.

When Edwardes made his second attempt to revive his suggestion of a
tariff conference was not within my knowledge. Most likely he approached
T. V. Soong through the Nanking Commissioner of Customs, C. F. Johnston, for
I received a note** from Soong in his own handwriting, saying:

Mr. Soong will be glad if Mr. C. F. Johnston will telegraph
Mr. Edwardes to come to Shanghai immediately for the purpose of
discussing the preliminaries of the proposed Conference.

I duly transmitted the message to Johnston and Edwardes came to
Shanghai in the early part of February 1928. Writing under date of
February 13, Palace Hotel, Shanghai, to Soong, Edwardes referred to his
conversation with Soong on his tariff proposals and requested (he was
leaving Shanghai on February 17) some reply from the Nanking Government with
regard to these proposals.***

When the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce got wind of Edwardes' proposal of
a joint conference between the Nationalist Government and Peking Government
and of the readiness of the former to accept his proposal it petitioned the
Minister of Finance:****

They (the proposals) would only lead to the tightening of
foreign grip upon the customs revenue under the guise of revision of
tariff schedules.. ..We therefore file this formal petition urging the
government to stick to the original autonomy policy, go on with the

*Copy of Edwardes' letter to C. C. Wu, October 20, 1927, and copy of

memorandum in both Chinese and English in Folder No. 3.
**Note from Soong to Chang in Folder No. 3.

***Letter from Edwardes to Soong, February 13, 1*928, in Folder No. 3.
****Copy of petition in Folder No. 3.

120

programs of taking back what belongs to China, and keep away from the
evil influence.

The Ministry of Finance replied to the petition:*

As to the proposals made by Mr. Edwardes concerning
preliminary procedure prior to the realization of tariff autonomy,
they are only recommendations in his private capacity... .What is
published in the newspapers should not be taken as official
version of the situation.

Taking the view that there were features of Edwardes1 plan which
transcended in importance any financial gain that might result from it, and
which affected the fundamental policy of the Kuomintang for the determination
of which the Government and not a single member of it must assume
responsibility, Soong presented to the Nationalist Government a memorandum**
on the question. In the memorandum Soong pointed out that the total of the
available surplus to be derived in the Nationalist territories would hardly
amount to 10 millions per annum. He further raised the following questions:

1) While military operations were going on against Peking,
are we ready to hold a joint conference with it?

2) Is it worthwhile to have the available surplus, while
Peking will receive a corresponding surplus?

3) Will not a conference be misconstrued by our party as
associating the party of Dr. Sun Yat Sen with the Northern
militarists?

4) Are we ready to allow some unsecured foreign debts to
be made a charge on the customs revenue, thus increasing the
foreign obligations?

5) As for the appointment of an Inspector General, shall
we modify our policy of never recognizing any official appointed
by the Northern Government?

It should be considered unfortunate that Soong had responded to
Edwardes' approach and invited him to come South to discuss the
preliminaries of a joint tariff conference with Peking. He should have
rejected Edwardes1 proposal out of hand. In what Soong did he acted
impulsively and without consulting anyone. For on the face of it the
proposal presented an impossible incompatibility. Apart from dealing with
an unauthorized customs official, the overriding consideration was while
military operations were going apace against Peking, how could the

*Copy of reply in Folder No. 3.

*The memorandum in Chinese and English in Folder No. 3.

121

Nationalist Government sit down at the conference table with Peking and try
to agree on cooperation with each other.

Edwardes* Breach ^f Understanding Regarding Procedure Jto Be Followed in
Effecting Staff Movements within Nationalist Jurisdiction

When Edwardes came South to discuss with Soong his joint tariff
Conference proposal, he wrote me on February 8. 1928, asking to see me.*
When he called on me the matters discussed were concerned with the transfer
and replacement of customs staff, which were ordered by the Inspector
General, taking effect within Nationalist territory. I mentioned to him the
policy of the Nationalist Government which never had and would not recognize
the right of any official appointed by the Peking Government to exercise
authority within its jurisdiction. I also expounded to him the formula I
had evolved for meeting the situation, which was for the Inspector General
to send his list of staff movements to the Shanghai Commissioner and ask him
to submit the list to the Kwan Wu Shu for approval. The exact words I used
were: You can inform the Shanghai Commissioner to send in the proposed
movements under his signature as did before.** In this way the normal
functioning of the customs service or integrity of the customs would be
preserved.

At this meeting he presented no arguments or objections to my formula,
nor did he offer any alternate plan. It left me in the impression that an
understanding had been reached.

Meanwhile I received on February 15, 1928, from the Shanghai
Commissioner, F. W. Maze, a list of the proposed changes of the
Commissioners of Customs, which I accordingly approved.***

On April 1, 1928, I received from the Nanking Commissioner, Johnston, a
telegram from Edwardes, repudiating the understanding reached between him
and me on the customs question. My reply**** to his telegram, April 11,
1928, was as follows:

*Letter from Edwardes to Chang, February 8, 1928, in Folder No. 2.
**The slip of paper recording these words was preserved in Folder No. 2.
***This list of appointments in Folder No. 2.
****The draft of my reply in my own handwriting in Folder No. 2.

122

I have your telegram transmitted, on April 1,
through Mr. Johnston, and wish to observe as follows:

The arrangement between us was of course made on a personal
footing; communications of a personal nature to be sent direct, but
official communications of the Customs Service remain to be carried on
by the Commissioner in Shanghai. You will recall that even during your
recent visit to Shanghai, matters concerning staff movements (in
compliance with our then existing procedure since the Nationalist
Government came into Shanghai) were interchanged on the 15th February
between the Shanghai Commissioner, Mr. Maze, and Mr. F. Chang, and if
that constituted a violation of the sacrosanct integrity of the Customs
Service, then all that could be said is that we all would have to bear
the terrible responsibility.

In order to avoid all possibilities of misunderstanding, let me
state again that consistent with the facts and technicalities of the
present delicate situation the status quo existing during your visit to
Shanghai should be maintained.

I am sure you realize that this position is dictated by reasons of
state and means no reflection on yourself personally, which aspect 1
trust will be made abundantly clear in happier times.

With kind regards.

Yours Sincerely.
F. Chang

One day I was completely astonished when Soong handed to me a list of
the proposed movements of Commissioners in Charge of Customs in the
Nationalist territory. He said nothing about how to handle the matter. Of
course he knew and approved of my formula for handling such cases and there
was the 15 February precedent. Handing the list to me meant it was for me
to act upon it. I turned the list over to the Shanghai Commissioner who
submitted it to the Kwan Wu Shu and then I approved it. 1 had no record of
the date when this took place.

In a letter to Soong* dated 11 April, 1928 and received on 17 April
through the Nanking Commissioner, Johnston, Edwardes made the following
points:

a) Soong's failure to reply to his telegram of 31 March
had resulted in all movements of officers being held up.

b) In conformity to the agreement made with Soong at

*Letter from Edwardes to Soong. 11 April 1928. in Folder No. 2.

123

Shanghai, he has not made the moves without his approval.

c) Considers Soong's letter of 21 March requiring service
movements in Nationalist area to be recommended by the Shanghai
Commissioner to be subversive and to imply a split in Customs
administration.

d) Charges Soong with having repudiated the agreement that
service movements to be arranged by personal letter between
Soong and himself.

I was not privy to Edwardes1 talks with Soong at Shanghai and therefore
had no knowledge whether there was this agreement between them that service
movements were to be arranged by personal letter between them. If there as
such an agreement, certainly Soong didn't abide by it. However, since Soong
had advised him by letter of 21 March, which was subsequent to the talks
being held in Shanghai in February, that movements were to be recommended by
the Shanghai Commissioner, it would seem this should have settled the matter.

In his letter of 11 April Edwardes made a further point by asking Soong
whether he could officially address Kwan Wu Shu through the Shanghai
Commissioner requesting it to accord non-objection to the proposed moves.
The flaw of this procedure was that he would have entered into official
communication with the Kwan Wu Shu and the letter would have officially
approved his proposed moves. This was exactly what my formula was intended
to avoid. By acting on his proposal, Kwan Wu Shu would have recognized him
as the Inspector General.

In a further letter* to Soong dated 24 April, 1928 in regard to a
change of the Commissioners of Customs of Santuao and Kongmoon which must be
effected in a hurry, Edwardes proposed three alternative procedures for
dealing with the matter:

1) To address the Kwan Wu Shu officially through the
Shanghai Commissioner.

2) To instruct the Commissioners concerned to hand over
to the next senior employee without making a definite
appointment of commissioners.

3) To make two temporary appointments without further
formality.

Alternative (1) was already discussed and the other two all involved the
Inspector General exercising authority without even the appearance of the
Kwan Wu Shu approval.

*Letter from Edwardes to Soong, 24 April 1928, in Folder No. 2.

124

Soong wrote on the original envelope, in which this letter was
enclosed, to be decided by Director General of Kwan Wu Shu (Chang Shuchang
ho), and Wen or Ven. his own name.

In all these tortuous dealings and maneuvers, which occurred subsequent
to Edwardes' meeting with me early in February in Shanghai when he concurred
in my formula for handling the customs situation, it seemed to me he had
only one object in view — to win the recognition of the Nationalist
Government for his Inspector Generalship. He knew he could not deal
officially with me, yet he repeatedly asked Soong for permission to address
officially the Kwan Wu Shu. His purpose could be none other than perchance
he might catch Soong napping and responding to his requests officially. Was
this his strategy or fatuity? It was a great fortune that Soong did not
fall into his trap.

It was also inexplicable to me why Soong should have dilly-dallied and
dealt with Edwardes so long on a procedural customs matter. It would have
been easy enough and saved him a lot of trouble for him to have brushed
aside Edwardes' requests and referred him to me. This way Soong would have
enhanced his own stature instead of the other way round. However, all was
well that ended well.

By the middle of May 1928 the North Expeditionary Forces had taken
Chi nan, the capital of the Shantung Province, and by the end of the month
they were approaching the outskirts of Peking. Seeing the game was up,
Chang Tso-lin decided to withdraw his own forces to Manchuria and himself to
retire to Mukden. He left Peking by special train. When the train was
passing under a railway bridge at Hwang Ku Tun. near Mukden, a bomb set by
the Japanese exploded and blew up the car in which Chang was riding. He was
critically wounded and died on arriving at Mukden. Thus the Peking
Government dissolved.

On June 9 I received orders to proceed to Peking to take over the Shui
Wu Ch'u. Before leaving I spoke to Soong about the advisability of
appointing an Inspector General to go with me, he taking over the
Inspectorate General and I taking over the Shui Wu Ch'u. After the
accomplishment of the task, and after our return I could begin immediately
taking steps to reform the customs. At this time there was no
understanding, tacit or otherwise, as to who should be appointed Inspector
General. I excluded Edwardes from consideration both because of his bad
record as Commissioner of Customs of Canton and of the devious way in which
he had handled the customs situation. The one I had in mind was Maze, who
as Commissioner of Customs of Shanghai had cooperated loyally with me in
implementing my formula, who was a Senior Commissioner of wide experience,
who was in sympathy with my plans for the reform of the customs, who was in
good standing with the Chinese mercantile community and in whom I had
reposed confidence. Therefore. I suggested to Soong that Maze would be the
right choice to become Inspector General. Soong. however, wished to take
his time and wait, gave me no reasons, and did not act.

125

Owing to the interruption of the railway service between Nanking and
Peking, I had to take the boat from Shanghai to Tientsin, then by rail to
Peking.

Shiu Wu Ch'u was located on Gold Fish Lane [Chin Yu Hu-tung]. When I
went there to take over the insitution, no official was in attendance. All
from the Director General, who was Liang Shih-i, an ex-minister of Finance,
down were absent, except some clerks who were in charge of the archives.
The seal of office was handed to me in person by Chen Luan, the chief
executive officer, whom I had known before. I recall that a clerk of the
accounts department turned over to me a small sum of money, about one
hundred dollars, if my memory was correct, which was a minor incident to
show how scrupulous and honest the preceding administration had been.

I have no record of the date of my arrival in Peking, but my first
telegram to the ministry of France was dated 17 June 1928. Soon after my
arrival Sir Miles Lampson invited me to dinner at the British Legation in
the legation quarter of the city. It was in the open air with the table set
on the lawn and with big Chinese lanterns resting on tripods in the
background. It was a fairy-like setting with a cool breeze very congenial
for friendly conversation, but what we talked about was not quite pleasant.
For the subject that Sir Miles broached was about the appointment of
Edwardes as Inspector General. I asked him a rather undiplomatic question
by saying whether it was the British Government which was interested in
supporting Edwardes. He said he was personally involved.

I append my record (made after the dinner but no date) of my
conversation with Sir Miles:

Lampson: I felt great anxiety about Mr. Edwardes.
Chang: Why should you?

Lampson: Because I was involved. At first Edwardes did not want to
accept the appointment. I influenced him to take up the
responsibility.

Chang: I am not in a position to discuss this question, nor do I know
what the government will do. I can only inform you personally
what I know of the situation. We consider it a domestic
question not affecting the interest of any other country.
There is widespread criticism of the customs administration,
like the absence of accountability to the Chinese Government
for its disbursements. It is one of the policies of the
administration. Edwardes has a bad record with the National
Government. (This refers to his closing the port of Canton
when Commissioner without authority.) If Great Britain is to
make a stand on the question, she may sacrifice the goodwill
of the Chinese people which will not be worthwhile.

126

Lampson: The customs administration is an anachronism, which must be

modified to suit changing conditions. The British Government
will not make an issue or a stand on it. The service has
grown up under British auspices. Naturally we are interested
and I am personally involved. We have confidence in Edwardes
but none in the other competitor (be meant Maze).

Chang: We have no intention of necessarily wounding the feeling of

anyone. Hope you can see your way clear. The Nanking Finance
Conference has decided to respect the arrangements regarding
those loans with proper securities. (This was a reference to
the foreign loans secured on the customs revenue. Some of the
Powers wanted the unsecured debts of their nationals to be
secured on the customs revenue.) The question of Edwardes
does not affect the interests of any third party.

Lampson: Sir Sidney Barton (British Consul General at Shanghai) has
lately changed from being a diehard to a liberal. Don't
forget my troubles. There are some bankers like Chang (Chang
Chia Ngau, vice-governor of the Bank of China) who for
personal reasons with Aglen wishes to put in a good word for
Edwardes, but the general banking peoples find cause for
dissatisfaction with the service.*

Sir Miles' case was having influenced Edwardes to accept the post of
officiating Inspector General he owed him an obligation to have him appointed
or promoted substantive Inspector General; the service having grown up under
British auspices, naturally we (the British) are interested. Such an
obligation never existed in law nor should it exist in morality. As for
the service it grew up not under British auspices but under an Englishman
appointed by the Chinese Government. What British auspices there were, were
encroachments on Chinese administrative authority of British influence. Sir
Miles did not want to know what China wanted but what he wanted. Moreover,
it would be common administrative practice that when a substantive Inspector
General was appointed other than Edwardes, the latter could normally return
to his commissioner rank.

(Sir Miles later became Ambassador to China, then High Commissioner at
Cairo, Egypt. After he became a Peer he came to China on a commercial trip
and invited me to dinner, apparently showing no trace of any displeasure at
associating with me.)

*Record in my own handwriting, made after the dinner but with no date,
was in June after the 17th, in Folder No. 2.

It

127

The following telegrams* (translated from my Chinese draft) selected
from those sent by me from Peking to T. V. Soong at Nanking or Shanghai,
will show the information I received on the questions of tariff autonomy and
customs autonomy, my recommendations on the appointment of the Inspector
General and other related customs matters.

1) Today I have taken over the Shui Wu Ch'u and consequently it
has stopped functioning. However, dispatches from the Customs in the
Manchurian provinces as well as the Inspector General are still being
received by the Ch'u, for whom not one day should go by without a
controlling organ. I intend to exercise authority in the name of the
Peking resident of Kwan Wu Shu and to adopt a put off attitude towards
the Inspector General. Request the early change of person by mandate
and then all matters will easily flow into the proper channels. Please
reply. [Ch'iao] 18 June, 1928.

2) Since the takeover of Shui Wu Ch'u, there was no controlling
organ over the Inspector General. (By this was meant if the Kwan Wu
Shu was the controlling organ, he would be recognized by the Kwan Wu
Shu.) According to reliable information Edwardes was bringing pressure
to bear on the British and Japanese Ministers to oppose Maze. Though
there were no valid reasons for this opposition, it would seem the
matter should be settled quickly in order to receive the benefit of 'he
who starts first will control others' [hsien fa chi jen] and avoid the
unexpected. [Hao] 19 June, 1928.

3) Roger Greene (a Harvard man), the resident director in China of
the Rockefeller Foundation paid me a call. He said: since the
Nationalist armies have achieved the unity of the country, a new
situation should be created in order to arouse the confidence of the
people. Both the abolition of extra-territoriality and the
implementation of tariff autonomy could be proceeded with. He had
talked with the British Minister and observed his idea to be that
should the Nationalist Government take the initiative to announce the
abolition of extra-territoriality and tariff autonomy, except for Japan
there would be no question insofar as the British and American
governments were concerned. Since there was no question with Great
Britain and the U.S.A. it would be difficult for Japan to differ alone.
Moreover, the British Minister was better disposed than the American
Minister towards the Nationalist Government. The British Minister
would not interfere arbitrarily with our (Chinese) just and legitimate

*These telegrams in Folder No. 4 can be identified by the Chinese character
at the end of each indicating the day of the month on which it was sent.

128

proposals. Hope my telegrams of the 18 and 19 have been received by
you, but I have not yet received your reply. [Ma] 21 June 1928.

A) This telegram related to my taking over the organ for the
liquidation of the Russo-Asiatic Bank vhich owned the Chinese Eastern
Railway. The Bank was owned jointly by the Tsarist and Chinese
governments, (its Shanghai Bank building was in the custody of the
customs for customs revenue deposits, and this building later became
the headquarters for the Central Bank of China.) [Yu] 26 June 1928.

5) More than ten agencies were receiving their monthly
expenditures by appropriations from the Inspector General. Since the
takeover of the Shui Wu Ch'u, these expenditures could no longer be
transmitted by the Ch'u. The agencies which came to ask for the money
for their expenditures were all told that the original authorizations
for these appropriations must be reviewed and reauthorized by the
Nationalist Government, and the matter must await the settlement of the
question of the Inspector General before there would be any solution.
In my opinion whether these different agencies should be retained or
abolished as well as whether the original authorization of funds should
be upheld, should be re-examined by the Nationalist Government.
Thereafter the expeditures authorized should be paid out by the
National Treasury and the customs surplus should be remitted by the
Inspector General to it.

The Battlefield Commission [Chan Wei Hui] has applied to the
Inspector General for an advance of $150,000 (Chinese currency) to be
as usual agreed to by the Diplomatic Corps. This was stopped by me in
order to avoid the reopening of a bad precendent. If this question
could be settled early and the Inspector General moved South then the
withdrawal of customs surplus and utilization of the surplus would be
done at our direction. [Chien] 28 June 1928.

(This telegram gave cases of the abuse of powers by the Inspector
General . )

6) The Tariff Revision Commission [Pien Ting Huo Chia Hui] (its
function was to revise the tariff to an effective 5%) has been in
session for two years without having reached any results. On the
ground that if it is taken over, it will be difficult to reconvene with
its foreign members, the Commission has asked me to allow it to
continue. I have informally given it permission to continue in session
for two weeks and to conclude its deliberations on the basis of the
principles adopted. Otherwise it will be taken over. The Commission
has now concluded its business. After completion of the take-over, I
will report to the government the revised prices for its approval. If
the new values are adopted, the customs revenue will be increased by
more than 1,600,000 Haikwan taels (sycee) and the surtax by half. The
Japanese representative on the Commission, Mr. Yokotake, came to see
me. I said Japan should independently express her intention to help
and sincerely cooperate with China and receive the goodwill of the

129

Chinese people. I also asked him his opinion on tariff autonomy. He
said: If only Japan and China are in unison on any matter, the other
countries will have to adhere. If China should only first settle with
Japan matters relating to most favored nation treatment and financial
consolidation (by this is meant a solution is to be found for the various
loans which the Chinese Governments owe the Japanese and which were
unsecured); if the tariff adopted should be a gradually progressive one
so that the Japanese merchants could gradually adjust themselves to it;
there would be no reason why Japan should not assist the achievement of
tariff autonomy. Moreover, tariff autonomy should not remain long
unresolved, but should be settled early by the Nationalist Government.

According to this view, if the Nationalist Government should
independently negotiate and reach agreement with Japan and then
negotiate with other countries, it would not be difficult to achieve
tariff autonomy. (In subsequent years China achieved tariff autonomy
by reaching agreement with the other powers first and Japan last,
because negotiation with Japan was the most difficult.) (There was no
date to this telegram.)

7) A person from the Inspectorate General came to see me and told
me the following: (He wished to remain anonymous) Edwardes was very
apprehensive and did not know what to do. Last year he supplied Chang
Tso-lin with more than 600,000 dollars. Again on Chang's departure
from Peking he supplied him with 150,000 dollars. All these were done
privately. The annual expenditure of the customs service of 8,400,000
taels was spent at the sole discretion of the Inspector General without
a budget or report to the government. There were many hidden works
done in darkness. At present the tonnage dues and special funds stood
at the figure of three to four million taels. Formerly the Doyen of
the Diplomatic Corps, Oudendjik (Netherlands Minister) had written to
Aglen on the subject of the Customs surplus saying that the Chinese
Government had the right to dispose of it freely without the
concurrence of the Diplomatic Corps. However, both Aglen and Edwardes
still made a fool of the government in the matter. Most of the foreign
ministers hope that the government will take advantage of the
opportunity to recover control of the customs. 1 July 1928.

8) I have had discussions with the bank leaders here and
understood that the relationship between Chang Kia-ngau and Aglen was
entirely personal and not supported by the banking world. As for
changing the Inspector General there was none who would not approve.

If it should be necessary, they would jointly telegraph the Nationalist
Government to propose it. [Yen] 29 June 1928.

9) Japanese representative Yokotake invited me to dinner to meet
Counsellor of the Japanese Legation [Hori Yoshiatsu]. The latter said:
He undertands that I have come to Peking for the purpose of carrying
out plans for the customs administration and wonders whether that
purpose for some reason has been changed so that plans have not been
implemented. Answer: My orders are only to take over the Shui Wu Ch'u;

130

if the government has other orders for me, I shall immediately carry
them out. I asked: Whether Edvardes had asked the Japanese Minister to
intervene on his behalf. Answer: If according to the present system
the customs administration continues to be controlled by a foreign
national, Japan will continue to demand a proportionate number of
Japanese nationals in the service. Japan and Edvardes are often in
dispute on this point. Japan's attitude to the customs administration
is one of fairness and disinterestedness and to Edvardes is
dissatisfaction. Japan considers it strange for the Inspector General
to have various special rights.

I said: It is intended no longer to recruit foreign nationals for
the customs service, and the Inspector General must carry out the
government's orders. Hori agrees that if so, then it will not be
expedient for Japan to make any demands. I asked: Whether the Japanese
Delegation will move South. Answer: Nominally it vill be at Nanking,
in reality it vill have to be at Shanghai. He does not disagree vith
such an arrangement. [Ko] 5 July 1928.

10) I vas informed (confidentially by a member of the Inspector
General's staff) that Edvardes today signed three checks amounting to
more than 100,000 taels vhich vere the amount for the Wai Chiao Pu
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peking Government) in accordance
vith the case formerly decided. These checks vere sent to the Nanking
Commissioner for transmission to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Nationalist Government through the Minister of Finance. This amounts
to using government's money as a gift and it seems its acceptance
should be refused. There are more than ten agencies vhose expenses are
paid out of customs funds. The vhole matter of the appropriation of
money by the Inspector General should be decided anev. It is a
question vhether the Nationalist Government vill recognize the old
cases. Pending the receipt of nev instructions, the Inspector General
should not have the right to appropriate customs revenue on his only
authority. [Chen] 11 July 1928.

The Wai Chiao Pu of the Peking Government had gone out of
existence vith the dissolution of that government. The Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist Government had been going on over a
year vith its ovn budget and paid from the national treasury. Hov
could Edvardes transfer the funds for the one to the other vithout
instructions? Like all other officials appointed by the Peking
Government, he lost all authority for acting vith the extinction of the
government that appointed him. His action tended to shov his
unsuitability to be the Inspector General.

11) Your telegram of the 23 [Yang] vas received. I have discussed
the matter (loan) vith Feng [Yu-vei], Lu [Hsueh-p'u], and Chov [Tso-
min] (respectively Governor of the Bank of China, Managing Director of
the Bank of Communications, and Managing Director of the Chin-ch'eng
Bank). They said they vould do their utmost to raise and advance the
money; vhatever could be done vould be done; but could not indicate the

131

amount. My evaluation of what they meant was that the Banker's
Association and the Native Bank Association of Peking and Tientsin
could probably make up 3,000,000 dollars, but not without some effort.
I said that the face value of the (treasury bonds) to be issued should
be 9,000,000 dollars, which would be marketed and sold by subscription.
To this they agreed. I have drafted the treasury bonds regulations
and the regulations governing the Fund Custody Commission, which were
modeled on those governing the Shanghai Customs treasury bonds.
However, in the case of the Shanghai Customs bonds the total revenue
from the 2-1/2% surtax was pledged as security, any balance over
amortization being kept by custodian commission, which the government
could not make use of. In the case of the Tientsin Customs bonds only
an amount sufficient for the amortization will be transferred to the
custodian commission and any balance can be made use of by the Ministry
of Finance. To this point they also agreed. [Ching] 24 June 1928.

In mid-July Chiang Kai-shek was in Peking directing military
operations. He summoned Soong to Peking for consultation. The evening
before I was to leave Peking we met at the Peking Hotel roof garden.
He had not yet replied to my telegraphic recommendations on the
appointment of an Inspector General, and I did not raise the question.
He merely said to me that we "could not take everything by storm." I
knew what he meant, but did not think that exercising a sovereign right
of appointment could be likened to direct assault on a fortress.

The Appointment of Edwardes as Acting Inspector General by the Nationalist
Government

In the latter part of July I returned to Shanghai and Nanking. Pending
the appointment of an Inspector General everything regarding the customs was
at a standstill. No step could be taken to reform it, and no customs
revenue was coming to the national treasury. The only customs revenue that
was coming to the government was from the 2-1/2% customs surtax which was
collected not by the customs service but by the separate bureaux established
by the government. On the security of this surtax treasury bonds amounting
to tens of millions of dollars in face value were issued to raise money for
military expenses. This situation lasted about two months.

During this period I never again raised the question of the Inspector
Generalship, nor did Soong discuss the matter with me. Of course this long
period of inaction or indecision meant that something was going on behind
the scenes. I had heard that banker Chang Kia-ngau had been trying, at the
urging of his friend the former Inspector General, Sir Francis Aglen, to
influence a decision in favor of Edwardes. It should be noted in
parenthesis that at this time the government had received millions from the
sale of the treasury bonds and was no longer dependent upon the Chinese

132

banks for loans to finance war operations. I had a feeling that Edwardes
would be appointed, but 1 saw no valid reason for doing so.

One day Maze came to see me to inform me that he had information from
the British community that the Nationalist Government would appoint Edwardes
Inspector General and that if that should happen, he should resign. 1 told
him I had no official information on the matter and Soong had not discussed
the matter with me since my return from Peking. He knew that I had sympathy
for him, but the Inspector General was not in my gift.

Soon after this Soong said to me without giving reasons that he would
appoint Edwardes Acting Inspector General. I said that Maze had told me in
such a case he would resign. Soong said he did not want that and wanted him
to stay and asked me what should be done. I said appoint him Deputy
Inspector General. He agreed. (The reason for this was that Edwardes would
have the authority to dismiss Maze as a Commissioner but not as Deputy
Inspector General who would be appointed by the government.) Thus by an
order* of the Ministry of Finance, 3 October, 1928, Edwardes and Maze were
simultaneously appointed Acting Inspector General and Deputy Inspector
General. After so long a delay and inaction, it would seem that Soong had
only reluctantly succumbed to outside influence and reached his decision.
From the fact that Edwardes was appointed still Acting Inspector General it
could be seen that Soong had his doubts about the appointment. As for
myself I was glad that Maze had not been sacrificed and was given the
consolation of a Deputy Inspector General for his cooperation during a
difficult period of transition in the affairs of the customs.

Though in my opinion I believed that Soong had unnecessarily yielded to
outside pressures in appointing Edwardes Acting Inspector General and that
there was no foreign policy requirement for doing so in order to appease Sir
Miles Lampson, yet I accepted the fact and was ready to do business with
Edwardes and to see how well he could acquit himself in that position.

The order** appointing Edwardes was sent to Peking, but he received it
only on 17 October when he was in Shanghai.

On 30 October the Ministry of Finance gave instructions*** to Edwardes
to move the Inspectorate General from Peking to Nanking, the capital.

On 31 October the Ministry of Finance issued an order**** to the Acting
Inspector General directing that the functions of the Shui Wu Ch'u having

*Miniaterial Order No. 4187 in Folder No. 5.

**Petition in Chinese from Edwardes to Ministry of Finance, 17 October 1928

in Folder No. 5.

***Ministry of Finance dispatch No. 4, 30 October 1928, in Folder No. 5.
****Ministry of Finance dispatch, 31 October 1928, No. 12 in Folder No. 5.

133

been incorporated into the Kwan Wu Shu, the Inspector General be under the
control of the Kwan Wu Shu and that in carrying out his duties as well as in
matters pertaining to the reform of the customs, he act in accordance with
the commands of the Director General of the Kwan Wu Shu.

This order was only a reiteration of the functions and authority of the
Kwan Wu Shu which were embodied in the organization law of the Shu, and
which had higher validity than a ministerial order. It also showed some
doubt on Soong's part whether Edwardes understood his own position.

While Edwardes was in Shanghai he called on me only once after his
appointment. He had nothing to discuss and did not ask me about my views on
any question relating to the customs. However, I showed him a memorandum
which embodied my plan for the selection of qualified Chinese members of the
customs service to be sent abroad for the study of customs administration.
The purpose of the plan was to give the successful candidates who were sent
abroad more expanded experience and self-confidence and to prepare them for
higher responsibilities in the service. Under the plan I would appoint a
committee to be composed of the President of the Customs College as
chairman, three professors and a representative of the Inspector General.
The committee would set the examination questions and send them to all the
Commissioners of Customs. Any Chinese member of the service who possessed a
college degree could take them. Their examination papers would be sent back
to the committee for selection of eight candidates. These eight successful
candidates would then go to Shanghai and be examined jointly and orally by
me and the Inspector General. Four of them would be selected and sent
abroad yearly at government expense.

After Edwardes had read the memorandum which was in English. I asked
him for comment and suggestion, which he had none. Then I asked him to
initial it and he did.

Then a Kwan Wu Shu order*. 30 November 1928, was dispatched to the
Acting Inspector General Edwardes, directing him to carry out that part of
the plan insofar as the customs machinery was involved.

Some days afterwards this order came back to me from Soong without
comment, or noting on it what should be done. Immediately I took the
memorandum which Edwardes had initialed as well as the returned order and
went over to Soong's office to see him. I asked him what the return of the
Kwan Wu Shu order to me through the Minister meant. He said Edwardes did
not know Chinese. Of course that was neither here nor there. (All official
correspondence between the Kwan Wu Shu and Inspectorate General were

*Kwan Wu Shu Order, 30 November 1928, to Edwardes in Folder No. 5.

134

conducted in Chinese.) I then showed Soong Edwardes1 initials on the
memorandum and explained what passed between him and me when he called on
me. Soong said nothing and I asked no more questions.

When I returned to my office I had to think of what to do next. Soong
certainly had acted unwisely and improperly from the administrative point of
view. To have received an order to the Inspector General from the Shu for
the transmission back to the Shu was certainly extraordinary and not the
business of the Finance Minister. If a subordinate of the Shu should
disagree on something with the Shu and the matter could not be settled
between them, then the Minister would have authority to intervene and settle
it.

Before raising the issue with Soong. I decided to write a personal
letter to Edwardes. In this letter, in English. I told him that the Shu
order had been returned to me by Soong without comment and asked him to
explain his action and what he meant by it.

Meanwhile Edwardes had returned to Peking to attend to the moving of
the Inspectorate General to the South.

On 24 December 1928 Soong received a telegraphic communication* from
Edwardes. saying:

To avoid confusion over enforcement of revised Import
Tariff on 1st February it is essential that details in
connection therewith be discussed with Kwan-wu Shu. I am
therefore instructing Messrs. L. de Luca and A.C.E. Braud
to get into touch with Director of Kwan-wu Shu and would
request you to instruct Director to furnish them with all
information required.

Soong notes on the letter in Chinese, Director General of Kwan Wu Shu
to act accordingly [Chang Shu-chang chao-pan]. This remarkable document
showed Edwardes1 utter ignorance of procedure and his position vis-a-vis the
Kwan Wu Shu. He did not deign to refer to me as Director General, which was
only the English translation of my title, but as Director. He assumed
himself to be an equal level with Soong and me on a level with his
secretaries Luca and Braud. He was equally ignorant of what the enforcement
of the revised tariff would involve. All tariff matters, both the
negotiation with foreign representatives and the framing of the rates, were
settled and handled by me. The Inspector General had nothing to do with
them. As soon as the new tariff was approved by the Nationalist Government,

*Letter from L. de Luca, 24 December 1928, to Soong transmitting the
communication in Folder No. 2.

135

I would send instructions to the Inspector General to enforce the new rates,
which meant that the customs service should simply collect the duties in
accordance with the new tariff. If there were details to be discussed
between the Inspectorate and the Kwan Wu Shu. he needed only to have sent
some of his staff to see my staff. If for every matter of liaison between
the Inspectorate and the Shu, he would have to request Soong to instruct the
Shu to do it. Soong would have very little time left for his other duties
and would have become a messenger of the Inspector General.

This letter of Edwardes remained unanswered, and his secretaries never
had the occasion to come to me for the "information" required.

While I was expecting a reply from Edwardes to my letter, the
unexpected happened. On 8 January Soong showed me a Chinese document. I
read it and he asked me what should be done. I said accept it. It was
Edwardes1 petition of resignation dated 31 December 1928. Soong agreed. At
the same time it was my duty to draft the documents accepting Edwardes1
resignation and appointing Maze Inspector General, which he also agreed.

On the same day, 8 January 1929, a ministerial order* to Edwardes was
issued accepting his resignation, informing him Maze was appointed Inspector
General and directing him to hand over to Maze. Simultaneously a
ministerial order** was issued to Maze appointing him Inspector General of
Customs.

Here I should explain the procedure of appointment. In the Peking
Government the Inspector General was appointed by Presidential Mandate. The
proper procedure in the Nationalist Government would be for the Minister of
Finance to recommend the appointment to the Executive Yuan, which upon
approval would petition the Nationalist Government to make the formal
appointment.

In this case Soong had brought up the question of the acceptance of
resignation and appointment of Maze, which he had already done by
Ministerial order, at a meeting of the Executive Yuan, which approved
Soong's action and reported it to the Nationalist Government for record.
This was approved by the Government.***

Edwardes gave two reasons in his petition**** for his resignation:
A) Dual control of the customs by two persons which had destroyed the
efficiency and obedience on the part of the staff of the old system.

*Ministry of Finance dispatch No. 6320, 8 January 1929, in Folder No. 5.
**Ministry of Finance dispatch No. 1807, 8 January 1929, in Folder No. 5.
***Executive Yuan Order No. 484, 22 January 1929, in Folder No. 5.
****Edwardes's petition of resignation, 31 December 1928. in Folder No. 5.

136

B) Soong had failed to carry out what he had promised as a resolution of the
situation of dual control.

The first charge was false and unfounded, because the Deputy Inspector
General was not invested with and had no authority to exercise control
independently of the Inspector General. As for the second charge, I knew
nothing, because Soong had never discussed anything of the sort with me. It
was highly improbable that Soong had made any such promise to Edwardes, for
there was no basis for it.

It was a mystery why Edwardes should have resigned. It was hardly
believable that after struggling so hard and leaving no stone unturned in
order to gain his appointment as Inspector General he should have
relinquished it on fictitious grounds. The most plausable explanation
probably would lie in his belief that after Soong having been pressured to
make the appointment, he would not have the courage to let him go, and that
should Soong decline his resignation, he would answer my letter and
challenge me. Unfortunately he had overreached himself.

After the resignation Sir Miles Lampson spoke to Chengting T. Wang,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of Edwardes for the grant to him of
one year's pay. In Wang's letters to me* 7 June 1929, he for diplomatic
reasons wished to please Lampson and favored the grant. However, I found
out that Edwardes had greatly overpaid himself and acted in contravention of
customs regulations** for which he could have been charged with malfeasance.
(In those days the government had no control over the internal disbursements
of the services.) In my reply*** to Wang I wrote the matter of Edwardes1
pay was closed and as an act of grace the government would have to act and
authorize it. As the matter was outside the Foreign Minister's scope, no
one acted and Lampson's final effort came to nothing.

Maze Appointed Inspector General

The Nationalist Government had adopted the Western practice of a newly
appointed official taking an oath of office. Accordingly on the day after
Maze's appointment the oath was administered by me. The next day the North
China Daily News, an organ of the British community, in an editorial

*Wang's letters, 7 June and 19 June, 1929, to Chang on Folder No. 3.
**Maze's letter, 15 August 1930, to Chang in Folder No. 3.
***Chang's letter, 8 June 1929, to Wang in Folder No. 3.

137

scathingly attacked Maze for having taken the oath of office as if he were
an apostate of Great Britain. Of course the oath of office did not mean
Maze had changed his allegiance, but simply a pledge of loyalty to the
duties of his office.

After Maze's assumption of the office I said to him: A) The Chinese
Secretary in the Inspectorate General must be a Chinese. (The Chinese
Secretaryship had up till then always been held by a foreigner. It was a
disgrace to China.) B) There was a preponderant number of British nationals
in the higher ranks of the service, and he should promote quickly some of
the Americans in the service. (I knew at the time none of the Americans.
He immediately promoted some of them from Assistants to Acting Deputy
Commissioners. One of these, L. K. Little, later succeeded Maze as
Inspector General.)

During all my time as Director General these two were the only cases
when I intervened in the management of the staff of the customs. After that
the Inspector General was left free to promote, transfer and discipline his
staff as he judged fit, except that in the case of the appointment of a
commissioner to a post the Inspector General must submit the names of the
nominees to the Kwan Wu Shu for approval, which would normally be approved.
Then the Shu would submit the names to the Minister of Finance for the
official appointment. (Before this the Commissioner took over a port as the
appointee of the Inspector General, not of the government.)

The Kwan Wu Shu order, directing the Acting Inspector General Edwardes
to implement the plan for sending customs members abroad to study customs
administration, which had been returned to me through Soong, was reissued to
Maze for implementation, and was carried out without a hitch. Under it in
four years sixteen Chinese members of the customs had been sent abroad.
Most of them rose to later become commissioners. It might be mentioned that
after Little's retirement he was succeeded by Fang Tu, one of those sent
abroad. Thus the plan was fully vindicated. It should also be mentioned
that after I resigned my post, the plan was not continued by my successor.

The system of administration of the customs service had been going on
for over sixty years without change and had become increasingly unacceptable
to the Chinese Government and people. Although it had been efficient as a
revenue collection organization and not tainted with corruption, it had
become in fact if not in name an imperium in imperio. The most glaring
inequalities existed in the treatment between the foreign and Chinese
members of its staff. Though there was no written rule against it, the
Chinese members never seem to have enjoyed the right of being eligible for
the commissionership. Up until then no Chinese had reached the rank of even
an acting deputy commissioner.

It was the policy of the Kuomintang as well as the Nationalist
Government to regain China's control over her customs administration and to
recover her tariff autonomy. It fell on me as Director General of the
Customs Administration and concurrently Chairman of the National Tariff
Commission to carry out this policy and work for its accomplishment. Thus

138

it was not a personal policy. Naturally the government had the authority
and right to reform the system as it thought fit. However, considering that
it had rendered essential services to China and had its merits, and that the
foreign members entered the service to work for China, though appointed by
Hart. I had no intention to reform the system radically, or to replace the
foreign nationals with Chinese, but to shear it of its anomalies and
inequities and make it a modern instrument of administration of the
government. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal was the taking over of all the
important functions of the customs service by the Chinese.

Instead of telling Edwardes what to do and in order to show

consideration for his experience and judgement, I issued him a directive*. 8
November 1928. when he was Acting Inspector General indicating the necessity
for the reform of the customs service to conform to modern conditions and to
remove the inequalities between the Chinese and foreign members of the
staff, and calling on him to offer suggestions and proposals for the
achievement of the aforementioned goals. This was never answered by him
before his resignation.

As soon as Maze succeeded Edwardes I decided to convene a Committee,
named the Customs Reformation Committee, to be composed of five members,
whose duty was to review and discuss all the opinions and proposals on the
subject that had come to the notice of the Kwan Wu Shu and to make
recommendations. With a view to giving the Inspectorate General the widest
opportunity to have its views represented, and to facilitate the
implementation of any plan to be adopted, I asked Maze** to name two members
of the committee and I named three. The Committee met on 18 January 1929 at
the Kwan Wu Shu in Nanking. It finally agreed on twelve proposals, which
after receiving my approval, were submitted to the Minister of Finance for
approval, who, after having approved them, submitted them in a petition***,
25 January 1929. to the Executive Yuan for record. From then on these
proposals had the force of law governing the customs service. They might be
considered as the Magna Carta for the Chinese as well as the foreign
ministers of the service.

Of all the twelve proposals only three could be considered as essential
principles, the rest might be considered as application of these principles
relating to adjustments of salaries, leaves, etc. The three principles
were: A) Stoppage of recruitment of foreign members of the staff, except
after approval by the Kwan Wu Shu the Inspector General could recruit
foreign specialists when no qualified Chinese could be found. B) Both the

*Kwan Wu Shu Order, 8 November 1928, to Edwardes in Folder No. 5.
**Kwan Wu Shu Order No. 141. 14 January 1929, to Maze in folder No. 5.
***Petition of Ministry of Finance, 25 February 1929, to Executive Yuan in
Folder No. 5.

139

Chinese and foreign members of the service should enjoy equal opportunity in
matters of duties and rights. In other words Chinese members should be
eligible for the highest posts in the service. C) Both the Chinese and
foreign members should have equal pay for equal work, but the foreign
members were entitled to expatriate allowances. (The foreign members' pay
was far higher than that of the Chinese, because of their standard of living
and serving abroad. This new arrangement simply established the principle
of equal pay but did not reduce the foreign members' pay. for his basic pay
plus expatriation allowance would equal his original pay.)

As the rest of the twelve principles were concerned with minor
applications of these principles, it would not be necessary to discuss them.
Whereas before the adoption of these proposals the foreign members could be
replaced with Chinese and paid off, after their adoption they were protected
by law in their tenure.

These changes did not interfere with the authority of the Inspector
General to run the internal matters of the service except that when a
commissioner was appointed to take charge of a port, he must be approved by
the Kwan Wu Shu and then appointed by the Minister of Finance before
assuming office.

Other rectification of the abnormalities which had encrusted the
service were: A) Other than the Inspector General's service funds, budget
and pension, all customs revenue was required to be deposited at the Central
Bank instead of at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, a British bank. B) The
Inspector General had to submit a budget every year for the service
expenditures. C) The Inspector General still serviced the indemnities and
loans secured on the customs revenue by drawing on the deposits at the
Central Bank, but his remittance of the revenue surplus to the national
treasury was no longer referred to the Diplomatic Corps for concurrence. No
diplomatic objection was ever made to this change of practice. D) Since all
the surplus revenue was remitted to the treasury, there was no question of
the Inspector General paying out money to agencies he favored. Such
agencies including the Wai Chiao Pu, Ministry of Foreign Affaire, had to get
their budgeted funds from the treasury.

In order further to strengthen the service and to train Chinese
qualified to undertake more and more of the customs functions, I instituted
nautical, appraising and examination courses at the Customs College.

In all these changes Maze cooperated faithfully with me and carried out
the reforms willingly and without stint. In spite of the changes and the
introduction of the new revised tariff in 1929 which had 12-1/2% as the
highest rate for luxury imports, China's foreign trade and customs revenue
rose by leaps and bounds, and there were no grievances from the merchants,
Chinese as well as foreign.

Whereas Maze was brutally attacked before by the British press as if he
were an apostate of Great Britain, he now received a knighthood from the
British Crown for services in the British interest.

140

Looking back upon these events and pondering over the lesson to be
learned from them. I could not help drawing the conclusion that imperialism
was unjust and therefore could not last: that the benefits to be gained from
taking advantage of a weaker nation and bending the latter to the former's
interests could not be as great as if they were to work mutually for each
other's full development.

My_ Resignation &e Director General of the Customs Administration

After the reformation of the customs service my attention was directed
to the negotiations for tariff autonomy. The new revised tariff which was
put into force was based on the seven classifications of grades of duty
discussed at the Peking Tariff Conference. The highest rate was not more
than 12-1/2%. When these new rates were enforced, the 2-1/2% surtax
formerly collected by non— customs personnel was incorporated into the new
tariff and abolished. Thus all the customs duties were now being collected
by the customs service.

By the middle of 1930 I succeeded in negotiations with all the
principle trading powers except Japan in arriving at agreements on China's
tariff autonomy. Japan was the hardest nut to crack, and I devised the
formula of giving Japan a waiting period of three years in which her
importers could adjust themselves. (This negotiation was carried on with
Shigemitsu [Mamora], Japanese Minister to China, later Minister of Foreign
Affairs in the Tojo cabinet, who also signed Japan's surrender. He was a
liberal and told me once he did not know what the Japanese military was
doing in Manchuria.) I reminded Shigemitsu that when Japan was struggling
to regain her tariff autonomy, she had to wait six years, but times had
changed. He accepted my formula. Thus China would gain her tariff autonomy
in 1933, because by the operation of the most favored nation clause, if one
country should enjoy a lower rate of duty all the other countries could
claim the same treatment.

When these matters were settled and the customs service under the new
regimen was working smoothly, I thought that things would take care of
themselves and go on as a matter of routine, and I could breathe a sigh of
relief. However, there came a bolt from the blue. A T. S. Chu, head of the
Salt Inspectorate [Yen Wu Chi Hou Suo Suo Chang], came to see me in the
Autumn of 1932. He told me T. V. Soong wanted him and his staff, who were
functioning in Shanghai, to move to Nanking; he did not want to move and told
Soong he could not find suitable quarters in Nanking; Soong asked him to see
me and to borrow from me the use of the new Kwan Wu Shu office building
which was under construction and far from completion. I told him the Kwan
Wu Shu people had worked for five years in dilapidated quarters under
cramped conditions, and only lately I had saved the money from my budget to

141

purchase the land and build the new building, and I thought my staff had a
better claim to the use of the building.

The next day I received a personal note (in English) from Soong,
saying that the Kwan Wu Shu had been well established, while the Salt
Inspectorate was not and that he wished I could accede to Chu's request.

There was no question of Chu's finding quarters in Nanking, though they
might not be so desirable as the new Kwan Wu Shu building. Soong was
obviously duped by Chu. Moreover, I had to take care of the needs of my
staff.

During several years of my association with Soong our official
relations had been correct, but I had not been happy. He neither conducted
himself in accordance with the rules of proper procedures, nor was he a man
accustomed to the proprieties of Chinese classical tradition. On several
occasions I had considered resignation, but restrained myself and acted with
patience so that I could overlook the small things and look forward to
achieving greater things for China. Now that I thought I had done my work
and that not much more remained for me to do, I tendered my resignation,
which after Soong's vacillating for two weeks was accepted.

Reminiscences of Meeting Sir Robert Hart' s Relatives in London

H. H. Kung, Minister of Finance, was appointed in 1937 Special
Ambassador to represent China at the Coronation of King George the VI. He
asked me to join him as a member of his delegation.

Hart's son (I do not remember his first name), who was a prosperous
stock broker and whom I had not known before called on me and invited me to
his country estate. He was very friendly and hospitable. All I could
remember now was his rambling green house in which he grew grapes and
peaches.

At a reception I met Hart's daughter and her husband, Brodie.
Afterwards he invited me to a luncheon at his club and told me his wife
would take a trip to China in the coming months. He hoped I would show her
some courtesy when she was visiting China. However, because of the Marco
Polo Bridge incident which Japan created in September, the country was
plunged into hostilities and the trip never materialized. A Mrs. Walsham,
the widow of the former Customs Commissioner whose father was once British
Minister of Peking, also came to the city to see me just to show me her
courtesy.

All these expressions of friendliness and hospitality were not only
unexpected but also touched me to the heart, especially when I was no longer

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connected with the customs. I remembered the days when I was attacked by
British officialdom in China and the British press as if I wanted to
undermine British influence and interest. Now the British people had
recognized me as a friend. They seemed to have regarded me as having
belonged to and still was a member of the great Chinese Customs family which
Sir Robert had created. Not only that, perhaps they felt that had Hart been
living, he would have agreed with and endorsed what I had done.

Maze Calling on Me for Consultation

Between 1933 and 1941 Maze called on me twice to seek my opinion.

When Maze went on furlough in 1933 he named Law ford, the Shanghai
Commissioner to take charge and sign for him. On his return he found that
his Chief Secretary. Kishimoto. was transferred to Tientsin as Commissioner
and his Chinese Secretary. K. T. Ting, was promoted Chief Secretary. On is
return he came to see me in the late Spring of 1934, and said he found a
conspiracy on the part of Law ford. Ting and the Director General, Shen Shu-
yu, to oust him as Inspector General. He believed the arch criminal was
Ting and wished to sack him. 1 had no intention to give advice or express
an opinion either way; so I said before his return, Ting had said to me he
wished that he (Maze) would soon come back, which was true.

The upshot was Maze did not sack Ting, but returned him to his Chinese
Secretaryship, returned Kishimoto to his old post and sent Law ford to
Tsingtao as Commissioner, a less attractive post than Shanghai.

Whether there was conspiracy to oust Maze was doubtful, but certainly
it was a plot to elevate Ting to the Chief Secretaryship. Lawford was not
Acting Inspector General; he was only empowered by Maze to sign for him and
had no authority to make such dispositions as he had done. As the transfer
of Kishimoto to the post of Tientsin required the approval of the Kwan Wu
Shu, the Director General should have disallowed it. Thus it seemed that
Ting had fooled both Lawford and Shen, the Director General, in order to
achieve his own ends.

In 1941 when I was staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. Hong
Kong, one day Maze called on me. He was in Hong Kong for no apparent
reason, neither on business nor on vacation. At that time Wang Ching Wei,
after breaking with Chiang Kai-shek, had left Chungking for Shanghai by way
of Haiphong where an attempted assassination on Wang by Chiang's men had
resulted in the killing of his secretary. Tseng Chung Ming. Rumors were
rife that Wang was on the brink of organizing a government under the
auspices of the Japanese in occupied China. On seeing Maze, I asked him why
he had remained in Shanghai and not gone to Chungking. (The government had
moved to Chungking since 1938. Both H, H. Kung. the Finance Minister, and

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Loy Chang [not the same surname as mine] the Director General, were then in
Chungking.) He replied that he had not received instructions to do so. I
thought so but did not suggest that he could have gone to Chungking on his
own initiative. (The Inspectorate General was officially in Nanking but as
a matter of expediency was functioning in Shanghai pending the construction
of office buildings in Nanking.) I then raised the possibility of the Wang
government appointing him Inspector General. He said he would then in that
case put the Commission in his drawer. I said would that mean acceptance?
He made no comment. Adopting the attitude of "pu tsai chi wei pu mou chi
cheng," not being in office, one does not indulge in planning for the
administration of its affairs, I restrained myself from offering advice. On
the one hand Maze was loathe to foresake the amenities of Shanghai for the
austerities of Chungking and on the other he still mistakenly conceived
himself as possessing an international status enabling him to serve both
friend and foe. When he left me after the interview, I thought to myself
that Kung cared but didn't know; Chang neither cared nor knew; Maze knew but
did not care. I had never heretofore given publicity to this thought and
relate it here only as a historical fact.

I left Hong Kong in October 1941 for Shanghai in the belief, as opposed
to the prevailing diplomatic opinion, that the Japanese militarists had
already gone too far to retreat and that war with the Western Powers would
be inevitable. Events proved I was right and Pearl Harbor Day found me in
Shanghai.

When war was declared as a result of Pearl Harbor, all British and
American nationals in occupied China were interned. Maze was thus detained,
lost his freedom and had to relinquish his post as Inspector General. Later
in an exchange of persons between the Japanese Government and the allied
governments. Maze was repatriated in 1942 to Mozambique in Africa. From
there he later returned to Chungking. However, I understood that without
formality or consulting the government, he resumed his post as Inspector
General for which faux pas he had to retire.

Sir Frederick Maze had loyally cooperated with me and supported all my
measures for the reform of the customs service. As a product of that
service, he was quite competent to administer it on a routine basis. It was
a pity that in dealing with large issues and political questions he did not
have the perspicacity to cope with them without some guidance from the Kwan
Wu Shu. Had the Shu given him instructions to go to Chungking, or had he
taken the step himself, he would, for all I knew, have remained as Inspector
General as long as he had wished. He was succeeded by L. K. Little, the
only non-British Inspector General in the history of the customs service.

144

The Location of the Inspectorate General

When Sir Robert Hart was appointed Inspector General, he was under the
jurisdiction of the Tsung Li Yamen and necessarily had to work in close
touch with it. He established the Inspectorate General in Peking although
it was not a treaty port and there was no customs house there.

When Edwardes was appointed Acting Inspector General by the Nationalist
Government, an order* was issued to him to move and establish the
Inspectorate General at Nanking, but before the removal took place he had
resigned.

It fell on Maze on his assumption of office as Inspector General to
complete the removal and establish the Inspectorate General at Nanking.
However, he was faced with the situation that no quarters even remotely
adequate and suitable could be found in Nanking for his staff. But in
Shanghai the Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General had enough
space for accomodating his staff and in Shanghai it was also easy to find
living accomodations. Thus as temporary expediency he was allowed to
function in Shanghai and establish a symbolic Inspectorate General in
Nanking, pending the construction of permanent office buildings.
Accordingly Maze** on 1 February 1929 appointed Commissioner Law to function
and establish the Inspectorate General in Nanking. He acted merely as a
transmitter of official despatches.

Through my urging Maze bought huge tracts of land in Nanking along the
Chung Shan Road as the site of the future Inspectorate General. However.
after my resignation in 1932 no steps were ever taken to construct the
buildings. The years between 1932-1937 were ones when China had a sound and
stable currency, her economy and trade were flourishing and expanding and
her customs revenues rose accordingly. There would be no question of the
Inspector General budgeting funds for the construction of the buildings.
However, nothing had been done either by Maze, or by the Kwan Wu Shu. The
most plausible explanation would seem to be there had been a preference of
the amenities and social life of Shanghai to doing the right thing for the
government. Had Maze done the right thing between 1932-1937. he would have
been functioning in Nanking and moved with the government in 1938 to
Chungking. Then he would have avoided internment in 1941 by the Japanese.

*Ministry of Finance Order No. 5, 30 October 1928 in Folder No. 5.
**Ministry of Finance Order No. 8017, 5 March 1929, acknowledging Maze's
action.

145
Washington. San Francisco and Moscow

In 1943 I took the long trek from Shanghai to Washington. D.C. I
travelled through occupied territory by rail, cart, truck and air first to
Chungking. On arrival. H. H. Kung, President of the Executive Yuan asked me
to assume the post of Director General of Customs, saying he was planning
for the situation after the war. I replied that I was committed to going to
Washington. B.C. to assist T. V. Soong, Chairman of the China Defense
Supplies Incorporated, a corporation handling Lend and Lease for China. He
telegraphed Soong to release me but received a negative reply.

I received an A-l permit from the State Department in July to fly to
Washington by American Air Force planes. At the Aden airport I met Little
on his way to Chungking to assume his post as Inspector General. I arrived
in Washington in August and Soong put me in charge as second in command with
the title of Special Assistant (an American nomenclature). He was then also
Minister of Foreign Affairs of China and the celebrated scholar Hu Shih was
Ambassador in Washington before my arrival, who was succeeded by Wei Tao
Ming (Currently in 1970 Minister of Foreign Affairs in Taiwan). Wei was
on his way to Paris as Ambassador, but was stranded in Washington due to the
defeat of France by Hitler. I asked Soong why he superseded Hu with Wei, a
transaction which seemed to me highly unwise, because Hu was well known and
in constant demand as a speaker for and on China, whereas Wei was unknown
(He was French educated). Soong said Hu was always absent from Washington
and could not be found. It was not a convincing reason he had given me.

Later in the year Soong returned to Chungking for consultations. I was
given authority to act and sign for him. I learned he quarreled with Chiang
about General Stilwell, and as a consequence he no longer was Minister of
Foreign Affairs and had also given up his Chairmanship of C. D. S. in favor
of Wei. I wound up his affairs and handed over C. D. S. to Wei for him.

Having nothing to do and not finding it easy to return to China, I
enrolled as a student at the School of Public Administration at Harvard in
the Fall of 1944. Learning of my record the Harvard Corporation was good
enough to appoint me as a Resident Consultant. I sat in Professor Hansen's
classes to learn Keynesian economics.

In 1945 Soong emerged as President of the Executive Yuan and headed
China's Delegation to the United Nations Organization Meeting held in San
Francisco. I became a member of the delegation and represented China on its
legal and economic committees.

Before the conference ended Soong received orders from Chiang Kai-shek
to proceed to Moscow to negotiate with Stalin on the Yalta Agreements
entered into between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. On June 6 he asked me
to join him and when we left San Francisco, Stetinnis1 (the Secretary of
State) plane was put at Soong's disposal. When in Washington, Soong showed
me a two-page typewritten paper marked "Top Secret." It contained the Yalta

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Agreements, which recognized Soviet Russia's "pre-eminent interests" in
Manchuria, the status quo ante of Outer Mongolia, and the joint ownership of
the Chinese Eastern Railway. The status quo ante regarding Outer Mongolia
was that according to the Constitution of the Republic of China it was an
integral part of China, which had never recognized its independence. As for
the Chinese Eastern Railway, Russia had sold it to Japan already. I therefore
commented that the mere fact of drawing Russia into the war with Japan would
confer on Russia belligerent rights; with the Yalta Agreements those rights
would be given substance and defined. Beyond that it was not within my
province to challenge the agreements.

In Stetinnis1 plane we journeyed to Chungking for consultations and
preparations, and arrived in Moscow in the latter part of June. The most
difficult problem for Soong was Stalin's demand for China's recognition of
Outer Mongolia as an independent state. The question could not be settled
by telegraphic consultation with Chiang. Besides Stalin had to be present
at the Potsdam Conference on July 15, so Soong and his aides returned to
Chungking. Meanwhile China had addressed a letter to President Truman for
assistance in the matter of Stalin's demand for the recognition of Outer
Mongolia's independence. One night I was with Soong at his private
residence when Ambassador Hurley called and handed to Soong Truman's letter,
the gist of which was the American government was interested only in China's
carrying out the terms of the Yalta agreements and anything beyond that was
China's business. I remember having asked Hurley the irrelevant and
undiplomatic question, what Roosevelt would have done, had he been alive.
He of course could not reply. This letter showed Truman's churlishness and
irresponsibility, not even deigning to offer some diplomatic support of
China in the interpretation of the phrase of status quo ante in regard to
Outer Mongolia which after all was agreed to by Roosevelt behind the back of
China.

We returned to Moscow on August 9, and were airborne when the atomic
bomb exploded on Japan. Having failed to receive even a courteous letter
from Truman, Soong accepted Stalin's demand with the face-saving formula
that should a plebiscite conducted under the supervision of a Chinese
representative decide in favor of independence. China would recognize it.
The result was a foregone conclusion. In the matter Chiang Kai-shek acted
like a vassal (state) slavishly obeying the dictates of his master. I often
wondered what would have happened if he had refused to implement the Yalta
Agreements without having secured in advance guarantees and support from the
United States. Had he only waited a few days more, Japan would have
surrendered and there would be no need for Russia's entry into the war. I
also had wondered whether without the assistance given them in Manchuria by
the Russians, the Communists would have been able to overthrow the
Nationalist Government. It would seem that the China problem which has
faced the United States for twenty years without solution can be reasonably
attributed at least in part to the seed sown at Yalta.

1A7

I Became Director General of Customs a Second Time

Returning to Chungking in September and without any previous warning.
Soong one day told me I had been appointed Director General of Customs. It
was both a surprise and contrary to my wish. I had wished and hoped to
return to my ancestral home in Shantung to see my mother, wait and see how
the situation would settle before deciding what to do. Moreover, to return
to a post which I occupied more than a decade ago was not a very attractive
proposition. However. Soong insisted and said I was the man with the
experience to heal the breach and restore the customs to its former order
and efficiency.

On assuming office I found the Kwan Wu Shu somewhat changed. There was
an Assistant Director General [Fu Shu Chang] who was a Kuomintang Party man.
There were also many other party men scattered among the staff, who held
weekly meetings, discussing and criticizing the affairs of the Shu. They
submitted routinely their minutes to me though I was not a party man. I
read them and ignored them. This practice was dropped when the capital
returned to Nanking.

When war was declared between Japan and Great Britain and the United
States, British and United States nationals of the customs service in
occupied territory were interned by the Japanese. The Chinese Government
considered them as having been severed from the service. One day Soong,
President of the Executive Yuan, showed me a dispatch he had received from
the British Ambassador, Seymour, concerning the British nationals who had
been considered severed from the service because of their having been
interned by the Japanese, suggesting the treatment they had received was not
fair, and asking whether some pecuniary compensation could be made to them
as a consolation. Soong turned the dispatch to me. I was in favor of
granting some compensation. I discussed then the matter with Little, the
Inspector General, and the suitable amount of pecuniary compensation to be
made to each according to their salaries and years of service. As a result
I recommended officially to Soong the payment of the amounts, agreed upon
between Little and me, to the severed members of the service. If my
recollection was correct it amounted to something less than U. S. $200,000.
Soong approved the recommendation.

When the customs service was reformed in 1929, foreign nationals of
the service became employees of the Chinese Government and no longer
employees of the Inspector General. They became members of the civil
service. To have regarded them as having resigned from or voluntarily
dropped out of the service because of the operation of the law of war, as a
contravention of the spirit if not the letter of the reformation of the
service in 1929. Therefore, the government did what was right in paying
the compensation.

When the government returned later in the year of 1945 to Nanking, it
promulgated a law governing the punishment of traitors and collaborators

148

[Ch'eng-chih Han-Chien T*iao-li]. These cases were handled by the courts.
However, a special law was issued covering members of the customs service.
It laid upon the Kwan Wu Shu the responsibility to screen the customs people
who had served in occupied territory and to submit its findings to the
Executive Yuan for ratification. Accordingly, I appointed a committee,
composed of the President of the Customs College as Chairman, one
Commissioner of Customs, and a representative of the Kwan Wu Shu. Under
international law government functionaries who perform the normal duties of
their offices under occupation authorities do not violate any law and are
not considered as serving the enemy. On this principle the Committee found
only three members of the customs service — one Commissioner of French
nationality, a Vichy ite, one Chinese Commissioner, the Commissioner of
Shanghai, and an outdoor staff as having gone beyond their normal official
duties and collaborated with the enemy. The rest of the customs staff who
remained in occupied territory — there was never any order from the
government, nor from the Inspector General to transfer any of them to free
China — were therefore cleared and confirmed in their posts. I submitted the
Committee's findings to the Executive Yuan, which were duly ratified. In
this way the customs service was restored as one entity and in readiness to
perform its function as the customs revenue collection agency of the
government.

Here I would record my brush with the Kuomintang Party which was only
of personal interest to me and would otherwise not be worth recounting.
When Kwan Wu Shu returned to Nanking I found that the Kwan Wu Shu office
building which I had built and about which I had resigned in 1932 my post as
Director General, was occupied and made use of by the Kuomintang Party as a
broadcasting station. During the war the Japanese had used the building for
broadcasting purposes. The Party officials took it over and used it for the
same purposes. However it was in violation of the regulations of the
government that all departments on returning to Nanking should reoccupy
their original offices and building and no department should occupy the
premises of another. Negotiation for the restoration of the building to the
Kwan Wu Shu at first was not successful. Party influence from Kuomintang
bigshots was even brought to bear on me to acquiesce in the situation. I
was adamant and stood on my rights under the government regulations. I was
not a party member and I did not care a damn for what the party might do,
neither did I care for my job which was expendable. In the end they could
do nothing to me and I got back the building for the use of my staff. It
was some satisfaction to me that after more than a decade I was able to use
the building as my office. History had indeed turned full circle. Whether
it was by design or accident that I should have returned to the building as
Director General for a second time would always remain a puzzle to me.

The Legislative Yuan had passed a law affecting the reorganization of
the Kwan Wu Shu and Inspectorate General. It abolished the post of
Inspector General and provided for the incorporation of the functions of the
Inspectorate General into the Kwan Wu Shu. This could easily be done and
would mean that in addition to his other duties the Director General would
also be the operating head of the customs service. In modern terms it would
be called streamlining the customs administration and divest it of all

149

vestiges of foreign control.

When the law was transmitted to the Executive Yuan for implementation,
Soong called me in and asked me how the matter came about. I got the
impression that he had suspected I might have a hand in it and that he did
not like it. I said: A) I had neither been consulted before the passage
of the law, nor had I advocated or supported it. It was entirely the
brainchild of the Executive Yuan. B) The reorganization plan was a good one
and could be easily implemented. The only question was what would be the
proper time and circumstances to do so. I further added that personally I
was not interested in becoming head of a reorganized Kwan Wu Shu. C) He
could shelve the plan, if he should find the time was inappropriate. (The
government was at war with the Communists, and it was not a time to effect
such changes.)

Soong did not transmit the plan to the Kwan Wu Shu for implementation,
and it ended there. The difference between Soong and me was that he was
opposed to the plan which would involve the abolition of the Inspector
General, while I thought it a good one and only the time and circumstances
were not propitious for its implementation.

A New Threat to the Customs Administration from Within

Every so often the Kwan Wu Shu had been receiving a dispatch signed by
Chiang Kai-shek, (express mail in lieu of telegram [K'uai yu tai tien] ) a
less formal form of official communication, stating that according to
intelligence received a case involving a customs member committing an
offense had taken place and instructing that the offending officer be
brought to justice. I would order an investigation and the result was
nothing would come out of it. because no evidence had been adduced and none
could be discovered by the investigator. This sort of dispatch with
contents always about the same but different in some detail had been sent to
the Kwan Wu Shu not only once but for a long period of time. Not a single
case after investigation could be proved. The results had always been
reported to Chiang and yet the dispatch would continue to come. I could
only conclude that they were attempts by Chiang's secret service to
discredit the customs.

While I was attending the International Conference on Tariffs and
Trade, held in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, a customs assistant by the name of Yin
Lan Sheng was seized at night at his home in Shanghai, brought to Nanking
and shot by Chiang's secret police. Yin was in charge of enforcing and
checking the import licenses [Lu Ken Chi]. A construction company acting as
a front for the secret police had offered a bribe to Yin for altering the
date of expiration and contents of two licenses and Yin had accepted it.
Yin was shot without the benefit of a court trial. Though Yin was deserving

150

of punishment, but the punishment could not be death. This seemed another
attempt by the secret police to discredit the customs by inducing the
commission of a crime. Little reported the case to me while I was in
Havana, but neither he nor I could do anything to vindicate justice.

The Garrison Commander of Shanghai, who was a direct appointee of
Chiang's, had officially requested the Kwan Wu Shu to allow his men to
replace the tidewaiters of the customs service and to wear customs uniforms.
This not only removed the men from the control of the customs but also was a
fraud on the public, Chinese and foreign. It would put the customs in a
highly embarrassing situation whenever it should receive any complaint from
the public about some irregularities that might have been committed by these
outside men and find itself not in a position to deal with it. It was a
ridiculous idea and yet these military men must have thought they had a
case. I stood my ground and refused to accede to the request.

The customs operated at Shanghai a radio station for the sending of
messages to its fleet of preventive vessels. One day Soong's secretary
telephoned me saying that Tai Li had informed Soong he would like this man
to be in charge of the station and could I arrange it. (Tai Li was Chiang's
chief of the secret police. His official title was Chief of the Bureau of
Statistics and Investigation of the Ministry of Military Affairs. He was
killed in an airplane crash over Nanking.) I replied on the telephone that
if the Executive Yuan should issue me the order, I would carry it out. No
such order came. (Soong was the President of the Executive Yuan.)

While the secret police and military had been attempting to discredit
the customs and encroach on its functions, one night the Shanghai customs
outdoor staff seized a huge truckload of contraband goods, smuggled by
persons under the control of the Shanghai Shih-chiu Ta-tui, sort of special
police. The Shanghai Commissioner came to report to me — normally he should
report to the Inspector General — that X, the chief of the special police,
had called on him and requested him not to report the case to the Kwan Wu
Shu. (I conceal his name because he later became the chief of police or
some such post in Taipei and is still living.) It was a serious case.
Obviously there was no question of letting the matter drop and not enforcing
the customs regulations. However, it would not pay for the customs to
engage in an undeclared war with the secret agencies, should no accomodation
be extended to X. Therefore I authorized the Shanghai Commissioner to tell
X that he could refrain from reporting the case to me on the following
conditions: A) That the truck and contraband goods would be confiscated
according to customs regulations. B) That X would guarantee no further
cases of the sort would happen again. (This meant smuggling by his men.)

The point was that had the case been reported to the Kwan Wu Shu, X was
afraid I might report it to the higher authorities, thus becoming known to
Chiang.

A few days afterwards I was invited to a luncheon by X through an
intermediary. This was the Chinese way of saying he appreciated my
accomodation, and the matter was thus amicably closed.

151

By the beginning of 1949 Chiang's main forces had been defeated by the
Communists. Chiang himself had vacated the presidency in favor of the Vice
President Li Tsung Jen.

The government sent representatives to Peking to negotiate with the
Communists for a peaceful settlement. The terms offered to the Nationalist
Government were tantamount to terms of surrender. After the breakdown of
the negotiations the government decided it was not possible to defend
Nanking and resolved to move the government to Canton. In the circumstances
I had to make up my mind what to do and whether I would be of any service to
China by going with the government. Recollecting that in 1928 when I was
doing my part to regain control of the customs, I had the support of the
people and the government, and that since after the Second World War I had
to face the repeated attempts of the secret police and military to discredit
the customs and had to do this without the backing of the government, I came
to the conclusion that my usefulness had come to and end. Therefore, I
resigned.

Shortly afterwards Little decided on his own initiative, unlike Maze,
to go to Canton to join the government. I remember seeing him the day
before his departure from Shanghai and saying to him as a parting word, "Be
sure to being your seal with you."

152

III CONVERSATION BETWEEN FELIX PATRIKEEFF AND CHANG FU-YUN
[Interview Date: June 31, 1979]##

Washington Conference ^Z. 1921-1922

Chang: I will tell you briefly like this. I was seconded from the Chinese
Foreign Office to attend the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference
sometime from November to February 1921-22 in Washington — called the
Naval Disarmament — you know what that is.

Felix

Patrikeeff : Yes, the Washington Conference.

Chang: After the World War, you see, England and America didn't quite like
the idea of this Anglo- Japanese alliance. You see Japan was an ally
of Great Britain. But after the War, England somehow was on the
decline and Japan was building up a navy. England was always
jealous of anyone who tried to rival England in naval supremacy.
They called this conference so that the three naval powers after the
First World War, Great Britain, United States, and Japan, could try
to limit their naval strength. I forgot the ratio, I think England
and America were at even par.

F.P.: I think it was 4, 4 and 1. [Ed: 5:5:3]

Chang: Something like that. Japan was given a little less. At the same

time I think, if I remember correctly, America required that England
should abandon the Anglo-Japanese alliance. What concerned China
was the Nine Power Treaty, not naval disarmament. China asked for
the abolition of unequal treaties. In other words, China wanted to
restore her tariff autonomy. That is, to be able to have the right
to increase her tariffs to have more money coming to the treasury
and also for the abolition of extra-territorial rights. China
didn't achieve that because the Nine Powers, they were called the
Treaty Powers, didn't agree. But they did promise in that treaty to
allow China to increase her tariffs by so many percent, not above 5,
as applied to different categories in seven stages. The Nine Powers
were afraid China would adopt a protective tariff, but they could
see no reason to disagree to China's request for a revenue tariff.
This was a tariff for government expenses. Anyway, so I returned
home in 1922.

153

In 1922 I think the Chihli military clique or faction fought
the Manchurian faction of Chang Tso-lin. Sometime in April of 1922
they defeated Chang Tso-lin and the warring ceased. I happened to
know the new cabinet was practically nominated by Wu P'ei-fu. Wu
P'ei-fu was a hsiu-t'sai* [cultivated talent], educated military
man, considered to be liberal, so far as it could be said in those
days of a military man, and an honest man. He was not interested in
greed, in getting money, by hook or by crook. He was interested in
unifying the country. Wu P'ei-fu's chief was T'sao K'un, and when
Wu P'ei-fu came into power T'sao K'un became the acting general of
the Chih hsi [Chihli clique]. Wang Ch'ung-hui headed the cabinet.
He was a Chinese legal scholar, but he was a, what do you call,
goodie, that is a —

P.P.: Goodie-goodie, yeah!

Chang: He was just a good man. He was a legal man but not quite able. My
dean, Dean Pound of Harvard, said Wang Ch'ung-hui wrote the best
English translation of the German Code to date in America. The
Minister of Communications in the cabinet was a friend of mine by
the name of Kao En-hung. I have his couplet here, [laughter] And
when my friend became the Chiao-t'ung Tung-chang, Minister of
Communication, he asked me, not asked, he just commanded me, "Come
out, help me in this department." So, I was made a departmental
director of the Ministry of Communications at a very young age. I
was not yet quite 30. You see in a Ministry, there is the Minister,
the Vice Minister and then a Department Chief. You see I held quite
a high position at that early age. So I took up the work of the
Marine Department.

Meeting with Sun Yat-sen

While I was Director of the Marine Department in the Ministry of
Communications in Peking, in 1922, I think it was November, there
was a case concerning the China Merchants' [Steam Navigation]
Corporation. You know that was the only Chinese shipping company
which could compete with the two then existing British companies,
Jardine-Matheson and Butterfield and Swire. This China Merchants'

Unofficial term for men qualified to participate in Provincial Examinations
in the imperial civil service recruitment sequence.

154

Shipping Company was organized by Li Hung-chang. Li Hung-chang was
sort of a relative of mine. His grandniece was my former wife.
Anyway, it was organized very early by Li Hung-chang. But by the
time I was in charge of the Marine Department in the Ministry of
Communications, it had fallen into corruption. Somebody was
usurping authority. It was partly owned by the government and
partly privately owned. Somehow the owners sued the usurper. I was
appointed to go to Shanghai to investigate and devise a solution to
this problem. Well, I don't want to go into that. Anyway, so, at
that time, T. V. Soong, another noted Chinese [laughter] official,
was in Shanghai. He was holding a very lowly job. He was English
secretary to Han-Yeh-P'ing Coal and Iron Company, just a secretary.
You know one of his sisters was married to Sun Yat-sen.

P.P.: Yes, I do.

Chang: Well anyway, you see, Dr. Sun at that time had been kicked out of
Canton by Ch'en Chiung-ming and he was living in Shanghai as a
refugee in the French settlement. Although I never supported the
Kuomintang revolution — never, I was opposed to it — nevertheless, I
regarded Dr. Sun as a famous man, famous revolutionary. So I asked
my friend T. V. Soong, who was sort of a classmate of mine at
Harvard. He was one year below me in the college. I was '14, he
was '15. Well, I went to him and said, "Could you arrange for me a
meeting with Dr. Sun Yat-sen?" I wanted to meet him although I
never supported his revolutionary movement. I didn't think it would
work, and I was right. The Kuomintang was going out of business.
Well, anyway, he arranged a meeting for me with Dr. Sun. He didn't
have much to say to me. Of course I went there to listen, to see
what sort of man he was, what he would say to me. I remember
distinctly what he said, "Young man, pu yao tso kuan" — don't be a
Mandarin, be a revolutionary. That's all he said, "Young man, don't
be an official in Peking." In other words, "Come out and be a
revolutionary." That's all he said. The interview was very short.
I didn't have much to say and I was not impressed. At this time
last year when we were in Shanghai, we visited Dr. Sun's home. It's
still there, kept as a shrine by the Communists. And I pointed out
to my family, "That's where I met him" — a small study.

When I returned to my hotel, somehow the idea came to me.
Although I did not support his revolutionary movement, nevertheless,
it represented a political force. I said to myself, "You are still
in Wu P'ei-fu's cabinet" — I had not resigned. "If it can be brought
about, cooperation between Wu P'ei-fu representing the enlightened
entities in the warlord world — the Chih hsi force had strength — and
Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary force, maybe they can unify China and
bring about a constitutional government." You see, there had been so
many squabbles, when Yuan Shih-k'ai wanted to become emperor and so
on. Well, now was the time to unify China. And to unify China you
could not gain control over all of China by revolution and
propaganda. Couldn't do it. There were so many traditional Chinese

155

forces which were against it. I was against it. I was American
trained and I didn't support it. Not because of the idea, but
because these hotheads, you see, they could only quarrel, they could
not agree. They were unreasonable. Well, if these two forces could
be brought together, I think, probably, that would be good for
China. So I went to see T. V. Soong again. I said, "Well, I want
to see Sun Yat-sen again." I said, "This is my idea." I wanted him
to find out whether Dr. Sun was willing and ready to talk to bring
about this coalition, to bring about a constitutional government
that was legal and T. V. Soong said, "Okay, good idea." He would do
it. So he informed me after seeing his brother-in-law, he said,
"The engagement was made." He would come to fetch me to see him the
next day at a certain time. I was scheduled to leave Shanghai for
Peking the day after the scheduled meeting. But on the very morning
that the scheduled meeting was to take place, T. V. Soong came to
my hotel and said, "Off, called off." The meeting had been called
off. Of course, you see, I was in no position to question him why
he had called it off. I had no assurance that Wu P'ei-fu would
accept such an arrangement. If Sun was willing to negotiate, I was
willing to see whether Wu P'ei-fu would be willing. If he was
willing, the the two could come together and talk. That's all. So,
all right, I accepted it without question. I left the next morning
for Peking. That's 1922, December, near the New Year. You know
what happened? That was a tremendous decision for Sun Yat-sen to
make. I think he made the wrong decision. And history now will
tell. How? In January, I think, of 1923, over the New Year, a
joint communique between Sun Yat-sen and Jof fe was announced. You
know, J-0-F-F-E, was the representative of the Third International.
Sun Yat-sen, representative of the Kuomintang, accepted aid and
cooperation from Stalin, Russia, and they sent Borodin, Galen and
other advisers to China to help Dr. Sun to go back to Canton and set
up a new government vis-a-vis the North.

F.P.: What were your impressions?

Chang: Wait, wait, wait, wait. And also Dr. Sun, by the same stroke of the
pen agreed that the Chinese Communist Party would be admitted to the
Kuomintang. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party could have
concurrent membership. Both Communist and Kuomintang. That's how,
you see, Mao Tse-tung and his people went to Canton, because of
this Joffe agreement.

Well, another thing, Joffe had been sent to China before March,
in August 1922. He had approached the warlords and even Wu P'ei-fu
in order to get them to cooperate with Russia. But he was turned
down by Wu P'ei-fu. Now he approached this revolutionary who
accepted his idea. So, I had thought if Dr. Sun, instead of turning
to Russia, had tried to work out some sort of accord with Wu P'ei-
fu, China's history might have been different. But by the time I
made the suggestion, it was already too late. I think they were
already in contact, in negotiations, Joffe and Dr. Sun. But when he

156

agreed to see me. probably they had not yet clinched the bargain.
But, during the one to two day interval before I was scheduled to
see him, probably they reached agreement. Then he turned me down.
That was my guess, I don't know.

Chiao-t'ung University

Meanwhile, the Wu P'ei-fu cabinet fell. Within the Chih hsi, the
Chihli faction, there was a struggle. There was a faction which was
interested in putting the chief of the Chih hsi, T'sao K'un, that is
Wu P'ei-fu's chief, into the president's chair. They couldn't oust
Wu Pei-fu. If they ousted Wu Pei-fu, the Chih hsi would be an empty
shell, [laughter] So, they manipulated to oust Wu Pei-fu's cabinet.
Wu Pei-fu's cabinet was composed of Wang Ch'ung-hui. American
trained, Lo Wen-kan, Minister of Hsing-fa, of Justice, an Oxford
man — I knew them all. And also T'ang En-po, Education Minister, all
liberal, well educated, modern men. But Wu Pei-fu's chief, T'sao
K'un, and the other people in the faction were old. You may say,
like in America, they were, in a sense, petty politicians — they were
interested in putting their man into the presidency so they could go
into the cabinet. They ousted Wu Pei-fu's cabinet and that brought
about a wei hsien [violation of the constitution]. You see Wu Pei-
fu brought back the old parliament dissolved by Yuan Shih-k'ai, so
that he could reunite them. Wu Pei-fu's idea was a good idea. But
the move to put Tsao K'un into the presidency — how could they do
it? The only way to do it now that the old parliament was being
called back was by bribery. They had to bribe the recalled
parliament to elect T'sao K'un to be the president, and they did
exactly that. Of course when they ousted Wu Pei-fu's parliament, my
friend Kao En-hung resigned, and naturally I was organized out of a
job. That was 1922.

I think in 1923, if I remember correctly, in this new cabinet,
the corrupt cabinet which supported by bribery made T'sao K'un the
president, the new Minister of the Chiao-t'ung [Ministry of
Communications], the Ministry I resigned from, was a man by the name
of Wu Chiu-fang. He was. by the way, a fan of a female
impersonator, not the equal of Mei Lan-fang, but one of the big four
tan. At that time in China we had four, four big, we call tan,
actors. They played the part of females. One of these was Shang
Hsiao-yun. I have his painting in my back room. Anyway, this new
Minister of Communications. Wu Chiu-fang. was a fan of this Hsiao-
yun. Every week after 5 o'clock, after the office, he went to Shang
Hsiao-yun's residence in Peking to eat with him and probably even to
hear him sing. Anyway that's off the record.

157

Anyway, in Peking there was a college called Chiao-t'ung
University. It was the Peking Chiao-t'ung University, not the
Shanghai. The Shanghai Chiao-t'ung University is still extant. The
Communists have kept it up, and it's still there. This one is the
Peking Chiao-t'ung Ta-hsueh; same name, but in Peking. It teaches
public administration, like the railroad, accounting, telegraph and
so on. It's different, it teaches management and administration as
related to the functions of the Chiao-t'ung Pu.

Well, Wu Chiu-fang was looking for a president for this Chiao-
t'ung Ta-hsueh in Peking. Well, an ex-president of Ching Hua, I'll
show you. [Goes to point out the ex-president of Ching Hua in a
picture he has of the Chinese Student Alliance taken at Cornell] By
that time he was no longer a president of Ching Hua, he was a
banker. Since he was an ex-president of Ching Hua, he was
approached to recommend a person who he thought would be suitable to
be president of Chiao-t'ung Ta-hsueh. And he came to me and asked
me to take the job. I said, "Well, I was an appointee of the Wu
P'ei-fu cabinet. My boss was turned out and I resigned. Now if I
come forward to serve in this cabinet, do you think that would be
all right?" He said, "Doesn't matter." They respected me as a
scholar. They had lots of the old scholars, Hanlin, but they were
scholars in the old classical sense. That's all. So, I accepted
and took up the post as president of Chiao-t'ung University. That's
1923.

By 192A, I received a coded telegram from T. V. Soong in
Shanghai saying, "Dr. Sun is going back to Canton to organize his
government." Without telling me about this Communist business, the
cooperation with the Chinese Communists, he said, "Good opportunity,
come." It was secret, you see. I was in the North and I got this
secret coded message. I turned him down. I turned him down on this
pretext. I said this college just had a crisis — student rebellion.
They kicked out the last president. Now the Ministry did not know
what to do. Like the Berkeley riot, they did not know how to quell
the rebellion. I accepted the job and took over. Well, I took it
over without trouble. Everything was orderly. I just did it. I
told him I could not forsake the job just because I had a better
opportunity. Well, you see, although I had a Western Harvard
education, I am still a Chinese with old traditional culture and
propriety and all that kind of thing. So, I said I couldn't do it.
Honestly. So, I declined. In other words, I was not interested in
my own political advancement. If I had gone down, I would have been
one of the ministers of the new government. T. V. Soong had done
nothing. I had a better education than he had in America. I knew
more about Chinese history and literature than he did. He couldn't
even write a Chinese letter. And I knew more about Chinese official
work in Peking. He was just a private secretary, English secretary
to a commercial company in Shanghai. He went there, and he was
appointed Minister of Finance. If I had gone, I would at the same

158

time be his equal, not lower. You see. that's 1924. Well, now what
was your question?

Reflections on the Joint Communique and Soviet Advisers

F. P. : One question is what your impressions are as to the linking of the
Soviet advisers and Sun Yat-sen.

Chang: Well I do know now that internal agreement. What I do know is the
published communique. In that communique Dr. Sun did say China was
not yet ready for socialism. That may not be his exact words. Even
though he said China was not ready for socialism he, nevertheless,
accepted the Communist Party. If you admit the Chinese Communist
Party into your government and say you are not ready for socialism,
that is a contradiction in terms, isn't it? That's why when the
Communists went to Canton they were at loggerheads. And that's why
when Dr. Sun died, the Northern Expedition led by Chiang Kai-shek
tried to punish them when it reached Hankow. So it was a false
start. Anyway, the whole thing was a farce. If China was not ready
for socialism, why did it accept socialism in its government? And
why also did it accept financial and political help from Russia?
Borodin was the boss in Canton, and the Kuomintang government in
Taiwan even today is modelled upon the Russian system. In other
words, the party controls the government. And even after the
constitution was adopted in 1948 in China, the party still
controlled the government. That was the system adopted on the
advice of Borodin. Stalin's representative.

F. P.: What were your personal reflections on the Soviet advisers, their
role in the formation of. or in the process of Chinese history at
that time?

Chang: At that time Stalin was angling for support to stir up world

revolution against the capitalist world. And the capitalist world,
especially Great Britain, had a lot of financial interests in China.
Stalin wanted to destroy that connection, the British position in
China. So they came to China to stir up world revolution. I think
that was the idea. They had no love for China, no love for Chiang
Kai-shek. Joffe couldn't get any support from Wu P'ei-fu; so, he
went to Shanghai to look up this refugee and, of course, like a
refugee, a drowning man. he accepted any support he could get.
That's my interpretation. You know. Dr. Sun had failed, as far as
up to that time in Shanghai, in all his efforts to overthrow the
Manchu dynasty, and finally he succeeded, not as a consequence of
the Kuomintang military force, but by accident. By accident he
succeeded. But when they elected the first president of China in

159

Nanking, he found he could not handle the job. That's why he
yielded to Yuan Shih-k'ai. Well I don't need to go off into that.
And then when he was in Canton, he was ousted by his own general,
Chen Chiung-ming — kicked out! He was a failure at that time. So
now he grasped at anything to try again.

Rhoda

Chang: But, Daddy, what was the general Chinese public impression or
feeling toward that joint communique when it was published?

Chang: Of course, at that time, I think, the general public didn't have
much of an impression. In the first place it was published in
Shanghai. Only the Shanghai newspaper published it. I think the
people in the country, in interior China, they didn't know much
about it. I think only the people who read papers in Shanghai and
Peking saw it, and I think even then not all of them understood the
significance of the communique. I read about it — I didn't quite
see the significance. I knew all these intrigues, political
maneuvers were going on everywhere. That was common practice. I
never knew it would grow to be so big. [laughter] You know, I never
knew that. That's my impression.

F. P. : But, you see, the role of the Soviet advisers as having a definite
effect on —

Chang: Oh yes, they set up the Whampoa [Military] Academy. They were

trained by the Russians. That's how they got their army. Chou En-
lai was the political commissar of the Whampoa and the Communist
army, and the Kuomintang army had begun to fight at the Whampoa
Academy to be trained by the Russians. The Chinese had an academy
in Paoting, in the north, according to the German model. That was
established during the Manchu dynasty. Chiang Kai-shek had some
military training there, probably one year or so, and then he went
to Japan. Whether he graduated from the Japanese academy, we called
Shih Guan, I do not know. Anyway he came back from that school and
when he came back he fought in the revolution under Ch'en Ch'i-mei
in Shanghai. When Ch'en Ch'i-mei was eliminated by Yuan Shih-k'ai,
then he lost his job; he became down and out. He couldn't get a j ob
because he didn't have much training. That's why he failed. His
knowledge of Chinese history, Chinese classics, was very elementary.
He didn't know China. Well, he became so down and out, he joined
the Triad — you call that Triad? — those secret societies. In China
we consider them low class. He joined one of them in Shanghai —
there were two of them. When he became president, his boss, that
secret society chief Huang Chin-jung, the mafia chief in Shanghai,
returned his t'ieh-tzu. When you join that kind of society, you
have to sign a card acknowledging your boss as your master. His
boss returned that thing to him. You know that's Chinese courtesy.
Then, when Dr. Sun went to Canton to establish this new government,
Chiang Kai-shek went there because he was a revolutionary. He
fought in the revolutionary army of Shanghai in 1911, and he was

160

finally made the commanding chief of the revolutionary forces in
Canton.

F. P. : Now the period of post '24. Perhaps if you could, could you
outline it as you saw it, the momentous changes.

Chang: In 1925 I think Dr. Sun Yat-sen died in Peking in the Rockefeller
Hospital of liver cancer. Then, after his death, by 1926 the
Northern Expedition reached Hankow. Hankow also had foreign
settlements — French. I mean Japanese, British. When they reached
Hankow, unceremoniously without negotiation, they just went into the
British concession and took it over. Just took it over
unceremoniously. That is not the traditional Chinese way. It was
the Communist way. I think at that time the Communist Party
dominated the government. Their voice prevailed.

Britain dared not raise a finger. They could fight, they could
have sent in warships and soldiers and fought. They didn't dare do
that. That's where I admire the British. They knew when to advance
and when to retreat. Unlike America, no statesman — all petty
politicians. So they didn't do anything. But, within the
government, the problem began. You see, I was in Peking at that
time. I got a letter from T. V. Soong. the Minister of Finance. Of
course when the National government reached Hankow, the Minister of
Finance had no income, no revenue. The customs revenue didn't go to
him. It went to the I. G. in Peking and ultimately to the Northern
government. And, of course, the National government had the good
sense not to cancel that customs service. They could have done it,
but they didn't do it. Although they occupied Hankow, the British
settlement, they did not grab the customs revenue which they could
have done. It was Chinese money. And then T. V. Soong asked me to
go to Hankow to see him. So I went by rail from Peking to P'ukow.
Nanking and then by boat to Hankow. As soon as I saw him. he said.
"Well. I want your help." I said, "What?" He said he wanted me to
come, take over the customs. That's all.

I was appointed, you may say. the Director General of
the Customs Administration. Of course by that time the Nationalist
government only controlled up to Hankow, not yet Shanghai. And the
big part of the customs was in Shanghai and Tientsin and P'ukow. I
said, "Old friend, old classmate. I will do it." because in Peking
I had a sinecure. I drew a salary, but no work, [loud laughter] By
that time, you see. I was no longer the president of the college.
Some other changes. I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drawing
a salary, a consultant you may call it, a sinecure. So I stayed on.
One night in Hankow, it was 1927, next year after the occupation in
Hankow, just over the Chinese New Year, probably, February, he
called me in. He was in a very distressed mood, couldn't make up
his mind. He said he was under pressure whether to declare he was
for the Communist Party or against it. I said, "T. V., if you join
the Communists, I will roll up my bag." When you went into the

161

interior the hotels did not provide you with sheets. "I will roll
up my sleepng bag and return to Peking tomorrow if you join the
Communists." Fortunately, he didn't do it. [loud laughter] You
see, already, when I arrived in Hankow by boat, the government —
meaning the Communists — had organized the people who worked on the
matou [docks] — coolies 1 You had to obey the union rules. You
couldn't work as an individual. I didn't like that. I like free
enterprise, [loud laughter] So, I saw already that things were
going in a way that I didn't like. It was not necessarily Communism
that I didn't like, but the union idea. They control you — I don't
like that idea. Anyway, so I said, "If you join the Communists, I'll
go back to Peking tomorrow." He didn't do it. He didn't declare
himself. Well, meanwhile Shanghai fell to the Expeditionary Force.
It was spring, 1927. So T. V. Soong appointed me and two others,
Chen Fang-shih, Tu T'ung-tao — all of us were Harvard men. Chen
Fang-shih studied business at Harvard College, Tu T'ung-tao, he had
studied business and economics and had been teaching at Alton
College. Chen was the senior one. I was the middle one, but I was
the chief of the three because Soong did not know the other two as
well as he did me. At least he did not have such confidence in the
two as he had in me. So I took the boat to Shanghai. The National
Army took over Shanghai. Of course that doesn't mean the settlement
area. The settlement area was controlled by the Treaty Powers.
Well, that was 1927, spring.

Then the Nanking incident took place. You know what that is.
Somehow, something happened. The Nationalist Army somehow fired
on the foreign missionaries and some foreign communities. I do not
know the exact details. And when the National Army controlled the
Shanghai area, that means Kiangsu, Chekiang, they began a purge of
the Communist Party from the Kuomintang party. And Chou En-lai was
almost captured, [laughter] He escaped that purge. And then the
Nanchang uprising. The Communist army in Nanchang rebelled. That
started the whole thing. Then Chiang Kai-shek bolted and
established his government in Nanking as a distinct government from
the original legal government in Hankow. He gathered around him a
few of the Kuomintang yuan lao, elderly people. He formed his own
National government in Peking.

Well, what I know was that T. V. was a member of the Hankow
government, not of the new government. So, I was appointed by T. V.
to go back to Shanghai to take over all the financial agencies,
formerly controlled by the Peking government. T. V. then finally
also came to Shanghai. What his job was was not financial
administration, but just to get money for Chiang's army. That was
his problem. Well, those agencies in Shanghai like the stamp tax
amounted to very little. He had to borrow from the banks to supply
Chiang with the sinews of war. He couldn't touch the customs
revenue. That money went to Peking. Well, then Chiang Kai-shek was
not satisfied with his performance. So Chiang Kai-shek appointed
his own Minister of Finance in Nanking. Of course he couldn't do

162

anything. So finally T. V. Soong faded away. He didn't resign. He
didn't go back to Hankow because of the division, and he was out.
Of course, he was never formally a member of the Nanking government,
so he gradually faded out. He couldn't fulfill Chiang's bill. He
could not borrow money, because the Chinese bankers wouldn't do it.
Of course. I also faded out. [laughter] Nothing to do in Shanghai,
[laughter] You see, this is a very funny situation.

Meanwhile, between the spring of 1928 and the fall or late
summer of 1928, negotiations were going on behind the scenes to
bring the two governments together into one. In order to do that,
first they had to reach agreement on the policies to be pursued.
They decided to dispense with the Soviet advisers — send them home —
as a preliminary to the reuniting of the two governments. And
that's what they did. When that understanding was reached, T. V.
Soong and I went back to Hankow. That was about mid-summer of 1928.
Borodin, as chief of the Soviet delegation, asked for safe conduct
to go by steamer from Hankow to Shanghai and then by steamer to
Vladivostok. That was the easiest way for him and his delegation to
return to Russia. And Chiang Kai-shek was so petty, like the
politicians in the Senate and House, so petty, so spoiled, so mean.
You see, in fact, the National government was modelled on the Soviet
government based on Borodin's advice. Borodin was the organizer.
And the Russians had trained the Whampoa cadets for the army. Yet.
when you send them home, whether for better or for worse, according
to my idea of Chinese tradition, Chinese culture, and Chinese
etiquette, you should let them go home in a dignified manner. He
refused. What could they do? You know what Borodin did? At that
time Feng Yu-hsiang — the Christian general we called him — was in
control of Honan, the central part of China, and the Ching Han
Railroad from Hangkow to Peking in the northwest. He controlled
that area. So Borodin requested safe conduct from Feng Yu-hsiang.
So they went by motorcar from Hankow through the mainland of China,
through Feng Yu-hsiang's territory and back to Siberia. That's what
happened. After that the two governments coalesced, became one.
that was 1928.

The Economic Situation

F. P.: What was the economic situation between 1924 and 1931, including the
1929 crash?

Chang: I do not know what happened. That financial crash, you see, it was
more or less a Western event — Wall Street event — than a Chinese
event. You see, that crash was due to economic conditions in
America and in Europe.

163

In China there was no such crash. You know that English Jew?
Sassoon, Sir Victor Sassoon. something like that? There were two
Sassoons. There was one in London and one in India. I met him in
Shanghai at dinner party. I had nothing to do with him because I'm
not a financier, but I did meet him. I don't know which year he
moved his capital fron India to Shanghai. Maybe he saw the crash
coming, or it had already come. I don't know what year. I forgot
the year. So, he came to Shanghai and bought land on the Bund and
built the Sassoon, we called it the Cathay Hotel. Now they call it
the Peace Hotel. It's still there. One of the best hotels built
and the most modern hotel in Shanghai. He built and bought up other
land as well. So, he saw a future in China. Whereas in the West
there was economic crisis, in China there was a boom at that time.
I forgot which year he went to China, he did that.

F. P.: You've said that the '29 crash and also the depression had very
little impact on China.

Chang: At that time.

F. P. : At that time. So basically the Chinese economy at that time, as you
saw it, was on the rise.

Chang: Well, I would not say on the rise. In China capitalism was just

beginning. Some people were very rich of course, but they were not
like here — multi-millionaires like these conglomerates, you know,
like I.T.T. — not like that. No such big companies. It's
practically all agricultural. Only the seaports were beginning to
have a little light industry. So you cannot compare Chinese economy
with American economy.

F. P. : You had mentioned that the Chinese government borrowed from banks to
pay for, for instance, Chiang Kai-shek's armed forces. So,
indirectly the Chinese economy was on the rise.

Chang: I said at that time, the Kuomintang government, at the beginning,
had to borrow money from the Chinese banks in Shanghai to pay the
troops. But when we got our tariff autonomy we could raise our
tariffs. Then not only had the customs revenue increased, we used
the customs receipt as collateral to issue bonds in the market.
They sold very well. And when the bonds matured the customs paid
the coupon, the interest. Then the government began to have credit,
large scale. From then on the government was no longer dependent
upon the banks for its money to pay the troops.

In 1938, China specie was based on a silver standard, not gold.
Then when every other country demonetized silver, China sold her
silver to America, and adopted the managed currency. In other
words, it was no longer based upon silver — never was on gold — it was
based upon exchange value, and finally, paper money. That's what

164

caused the downfall of Chiang Kai-shek. When I left Shanghai, the
government was no longer borrowing from banks. They couldn't
supply the government with money. There was no longer any continual
exchange standard, just printing money. You see. I had a friend who
sold his house in Nanking. That was already after the war, already
the paper standard. And the buyer said, "Well, I'm willing to pay
you in either foreign exchange or gold." He said, "No, I don't want
foreign exchange," because by law everybody is supposed to turn his
foreign exchange and gold to the central bank in exchange for the
paper money. That was the law. But many people didn't do it. Of
course, if you were caught, it was a crime. My friend was very
honest. In fact, that house was practically his whole life's
savings. He sold it and accepted the paper money. Overnight it
came down to practically zero. So you see. tragicl Tragicl Honest
and tragicl He suffered so tragically. So, people according to law
were required to turn in their gold and foreign exchange to the
central bank in exchange for this paper money. Overnight it became
valueless. The people said the Communists couldn't be worse, [loud
laughter] That's another reason why Chiang Kai-shek was driven out.

F. P. : But actually this phenomenon was taking place in Manchuria much

earlier. The Japanese obviously were worried because the value of
paper currency there was falling dramatically day to day from as
early as 192A or so onwards. By 1931 it was at rock bottom.

Chang: I do not know the conditions of Manchuria. I do not know that.

F. P.: But it's interesting. You see, as far as I can tell, Manchuria,
even after tariff autonomy, remained in a separate position.

Chang: Oh, there they used the feng p'iao. Feng p'iao means feng t'ian.
P'iao means notes. They were issued by Chang Tso-lin's private
bank. Of course, they were all drafts. Anyway, any kind of paper
currency which is not redeemable in silver and gold is bound to
depreciate, bound to.

Assassination of Chang Tso-lintf#

Chang: In 1928 the revolutionary forces reached Tsinan. the capital of

Shangtung, where the Japanese troops garrisoned in Tsinan killed the
Chinese Commissioner of Foreign Affairs. Ts'ai Kung-shih. Created a
big incident. You see. the Japanese always harbored the idea of
preventing China's unification. The assassination of the
Commissioner of Foreign Affairs in Tsinan momentarily stopped the
march north of the revolutionary army. But when that Tsinan
incident was settled, the army again marched north, and Chang Tso-

165

lin caw that his days were numbered inside the wall. So he wanted
voluntarily to withdraw without fighting to Mukden. You know
Mukden, the Huang-gu-tun, you know? The Japanese bombed his train
under the bridge at Huang-gu-tun while he was withdrawing. He had
also a Japanese adviser. Of course they all spy. They knew his
moves. Otherwise, how could they know exactly when, what, at what
particular point of time his car would go under the bridge? So they
bombed him. That happened. They said they didn't do it. I forgot
all the excuses. They bombed him. That's 1928. So, Chang Tso-lin
was dead. Well, then his son — they called him the young Marshal —
Chang Hsueh-liang (he's still in Taipei) he took over. That's 1928.

Well, Chang Tso-lin, the father, was old-fashioned. He was a
bandit before he became the overall commander of the Manchurian
forces. You see in the old days a bandit could become so powerful
that he had a fort in Manchuria. In those days in Manchuria it was
like here, the wild west, sparsely inhabited, great expanse of
territory, and so on, like that. And when a bandit had a big
following, the government usually adopted a policy of trying not to
exterminate him. That would lead to a lot of blood-letting and
fighting. They tried to, what is the word? We call it chao-fu.
They tried to recruit them into the national military force to avoid
blood-letting.

Well they are all human beings. If you train them to serve the
government, why not? There's a practical purpose. That's how he
was admitted to the government forces' soldiery in Manchuria.
That's how he became legitimatized. And gradually when the Manchu
dynasty fell, and the succeeding government came in, of course, he
was already legitimate, part of the government force. They again
made use of him, and he became the governor, also, the Shih Yueh
Syhn Yuan. He was given a legitimate government title to govern
Manchuria's three provinces. Well when he died, naturally his son
succeeded him into the fold. They called this change the flag, i-
chih. I forgot the year when Chang Hsueh-liang succeeded to his
father's title. I think it was probably after '31 or before '31?

F. P. : Before '31.

Chang: You see, the Nanking government appointed him an emissary. I knew
him, Wu Tieh-ch'eng. He was not educated; he was just a
revolutionary, very ordinary. Well, anyway he was given a lot of
money and sent to Mukden to see the young Marshal to try and bribe
his entourage. Chang Hsueh-liang was very modern — liked dancing and
socializing. So Wu T"ieh-ch'eng went there with lots of modern girls
to dance with him, to play mahj ong and, in a way, to entertain his
entourage. Finally, Chang Hsueh-liang was persuaded to change the
flag, i-chih. Change the flag means to fly the National Government
flag. In other words, I'm one of you, I support you. That's what
he did. There was no constitution or legal statutes or laws passed.
He just changed the flag and flew the national flag, i-chih.

166

Customs Administration

Chang: I was still Director General of the whole Customs Administration for
the whole country at that time. And you know we had a lot of
Englishmen. Frenchmen. Japanese, even Russians and Italians in that
customs service. The Japanese were trying to undermine the Chinese
economy, trying to disrupt the Chinese customs service in Ying-k'o
and some of the other ports in Manchuria.

F. P.: I'm sorry, how were they trying to disrupt it?

Chang: You see I achieved the object of restoring China's customs autonomy.
But it would not be complete before 1931. I negotiated with
Shigemitsu [Mamoru], you know, who was at that time a Minister of
Japan. Later on he was a Foreign Minister, you see, he surrendered
to MacArthur. He was not a bad man. Shigemitsu.

Before 1931. China already could by virtue of the Nine Power
treaty raise its tariffs for revenue purposes. And even that Japan
didn't like. Of course. I negotiated with Shigemitsu so that China
would have full autonomy by 1931. I had reached agreement with all
other nations to allow China the right to fix its tariffs any way it
wanted. In negotiating with Shigemitsu I said, "This has to be
recognized in principle, but we will not implement it until 1931."
I got that from Shigemitsu. Japan didn't want China to be able to
raise its tariffs because that would have a tendency of excluding
Japanese imports into China. Of course, we never intended to adopt
a protective tariff on all imports. But China did want the money.
That was one way. And then Japan wanted to control Manchuria. You
see. because of Russia's defeat in the 1904-05 War, Russia had to
cede the Chung-tung lu — Chinese Eastern Railroad — from Harbin to
Dairen — that section — to Japan. And Japan controlled not only the
railroad, but certain areas on either side of the road. I forgot
what the mileage was. Within that area Japan controlled it. So the
Manchurian authorities. I think beginning under the old Marshal, the
father, began to build a parallel railroad. Naturally, they came
into competition with this Harbin to Dairen trunkline. The Japanese
didn't lice that. They called it a tariff. In other words, they
challenged China's right to build her own railroad in her own
territory, which is absurd. You see, they were not interested in
economic development in Manchuria for the benefit of both China and
Japan. They wanted ultimate conquest, annexation. That's why they
created an incident. They armed these Korean or Japanese riff-raff,
those lowest of people, to — what do you call it when you want to
evade paying customs duty?

F. P. : Oh. smuggle.

167

Chang: Yeah, they ran these smuggling teams, armed with weapons. You see,
the Chinese customs were not allowed to have weapons. I tried to
settle the matter with Shigemitsu in Nanking. He was a University
of Tokyo graduate, a member of the Foreign Office. He was
susceptible to reason. He couldn't talk nonsense with me. He was
not an unreasonable man; he had to talk reason, you see. [laughter]
I told him what they were doing and asked if he could do anything.
He confessed that he couldn't do anything. And during the
Manchurian crisis in 1931 I saw him. He told me, he said, "I didn't
know what they were doing in Manchuria," he confessed. In other
words, he couldn't justify it. He disassociated himself from those
ventures. "I didn't know what they were doing." Then what could I
do? So these were the circumstances surrounding the whole crisis.

F. P. : Did you have any dealings with the Manchurian government or the
Manchurian rulers?

Chang: What do you mean by, "I had any dealings?"

F. P. : Well, in the sense that when you were establishing customs duties
and establishing tariffs.

Chang: Oh, no, no, no. You see, this way. The central government still
controlled the customs tariffs. Tariffs were set by Nanking after
we gained our tariff autonomy. And when that was done, I issued the
order to all the customs officers to put into effect the new
tariffs. The customs service was still controlled by the central
government. The reason is this, you see. Before I became Director
General in 1927 of the national customs service, that service was
founded by Sir Robert Hart, a Britisher serving as a Chinese public
servant. But during the ten years after its founding, he ran it as
if it was an independent agency. He was employed and paid by
the Chinese government. Well, I wouldn't say he was interfering,
but he would go to London, to Harvard, to France, and to Japan to
recruit college graduates to go and work in the customs service in
China, start at the lowest rung and become a commissioner, and so
on. And all these people — What do you call the one in charge of a
port, of the customs?

F. P. : Oh, port authorities, I think.

Chang: No, no, no, customs. Anyway in China they're called commissioners.
Well they listened to him. As the Inspector General, the Englishman
Hart, he didn't necessarily take orders from the Chinese
government. In other words, the Chinese government by default
allowed the customs to grow as an independent unit. They did not
supervise it. So when I took over the Customs Administration, it
was one of the goals of the Kuomintang Government to achieve tariff
autonomy, customs adminstration autonomy, and also abolition of
extra-territorial rights. So, when I took over, I achieved that
goal. I took over control of the customs service. These Englishmen

168

I did not dismiss. I kept them there. I said. "Well, so long as
you are loyal servants of the Chinese government, you are paid well.
Take orders from me, carry out the orders of the Chinese government,
you are secure in your jobs." And they stayed on. Nobody wanted to
go.

F. P.: Did you have many problems in taking control?

Chang: As I said, the Japanese tried to undermine by smuggling, by armed
smuggling. And that 1 couldn't do anything about, the customs
couldn't do anything. The government couldn't send troops there to
fight them. What's your next question?

F. P.: Also, I'm interested in knowing, were there any smuggling activities
that you knew of in the Russian sector of Northern Manchuria?

Chang: No, I do not know. There's bound to be. You see the Chinese

customs service had its own means of preventing smuggling. Since
the customs offices were stationed at ports, the waterways, we had
preventing vessels. You know, armed boats on the water to prevent
large-scale smuggling. Like in Kowloon, Hong Kong. We had armed
boats but they weren't foolproof. Any smuggling arrangement you
have in any country, no matter how well organized, could never be
100 percent foolproof.

I'll tell you one story about the customs. That's one reason I
did not go to Taiwan. You see, Chiang K'ai-shek's special police —
we call T'e Wu. secret police — they wanted to control the customs in
Shanghai. If they controlled the customs, not the inside, not the
levying of the tariffs, the duties, but the incoming vessels and
passengers which may be carrying contraband, that would yield them a
lot of illegitimate revenue. They wanted to put their men in
control, but wearing customs uniform. In other words, they wanted
to control the incoming inspection of the things carried by
passengers and in the boats, foreign boats. I said no. My higher-
up was too weak-kneed to accept. I said. "I resign." They could
not afford to see me resign, you know. Big problem. I wouldn't do
it. So. they wrote to Chiang K'ai-shek, who was their chief, their
secret police chief. You see. I was not directly under him. He was
the military, the president. He could not direct me. He could only
write me a letter, saying, according to a police report, on such and
such a day some customs people were committing the offense of either
smuggling or permitting smuggling. It was all fabricated. So. I
ordered an investigation — it all came to nothing. No proof
whatsoever. No evidence. Another two weeks, another letter. Same
thing — all fabricated. You see, because they couldn't get this idea
of having their men wear customs uniforms put through, they were
frustrated. So, they tried to undermine the customs.

F. P. : Which year was this?

169

Chang: This was after 1945, between 1945 and 1948, before the Communists

came. I wouldn't do it. You see, I'm a hard nut to crack. I had a
reputation. I was in control there for so many years. They knew my
achievements and they could not discredit me, you know. They tried
to discredit my underlings — they committed the offense. But they
couldn't prove it. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't stand for it. I
would readily resign. Then one day the Commissioner of the Port of
Shanghai came to see me. He had no business seeing me. He had to
go through his chief, who was an American, at that time [Lester
Knox] Little. Little could come to see me directly, but not the
Commissioner of the Port of Shanghai- He could not directly see me.
Like the courts, he had to go through another stage to see me. But
he did come to see me. I said, "Why did you come to see me instead
of going to see Mr. Little, your direct chief?" He said, "The head
of the secret police in Shanghai, T*ao, came to see me and begged
me." You see the day before that the Chinese customs seized a
truckload of contraband. They seized the truck of contraband and
seized the people who ran it. Since the customs had no jurisdiction
over persons, they just took down their names, so on. and released
them. We could not detain them, or arrest them. But the Shanghai
customs did detain and confiscate this truck. Worth a lot of money,
you know, contraband. And T'ao, the chief of the secret police in
Shanghai, begged him not to report it to me. You just think of
this, what that meant. I had been receiving reports from Chiang
K'ai-shek, saying the customs people are committing some kind of
irregularity. Now, the customs captured smugglers which were his
own men. He begged him not to report to me. They were afraid if
the commissioner reported to me, I would report to the topmost man
and then, I think, they would be executed. They were so afraid.

I thought it over. What to do. You see, I had been having
trouble from this source — my own source, my own government. Chiang
K'ai-shek's men were trying to destroy their own government. Enough,
enough trouble. I thought that. I knew my own ground. I was not
afraid of anybody. Now, we caught them. What should I do. If I
said no, you know, they would hate me and they could do anything —
dirty business like the what do you call, the Mafia — they could do
anything. So far they couldn't touch me. I said, all right. I
would accede to his request, on this condition: he would control
his men, and it would never happen again. And not only that, the
contraband and the truck seized would be confiscated according to
customs regulation, according to law. If he abided by those
conditions, I would accede to his request. And he accepted. So
after two days, a mutual friend came to invite me to dinner at the
Sassoon hotel, [laughter] I said, "How many people?" "Only three
of us," this chief of the secret police, the middle man, and I.
That's the Chinese way. So we dined together, we shook hands and
goodbye. I know, settled. The Chinese old way. Settled. After
that, no trouble. I didn't want to go to Taiwan. I saw no future
for Taiwan under that kind of regime. I didn't like the communism.

170

but I said well. I better come to America and be a common man.
That's all. That's why I came.

You just think of it. All these things that happened.

F. P.: Did you have any knowledge of any such goings on prior to the '40's?
Chang: To the '40's — what do yo mean?

F. P. : Well, in other words, when Chiang ICai-shek was just starting to
gain power, did you have any knowledge of goings on such as this?

Chang: 'Forties.

F. P. : No. before.

Chang: Well, this kind of thing did not happen before the war.

F. P. : It did not happen.

Chang: Did not happen before the war. You see. after the war I noticed a
tremendous change which 1 didn't like. In other words, after the
war. you see. the powers, they themselves gave up extra
territoriality in China. Before the war China never gained it. But
during the war, I think largely because of Roosevelt. He
approached Churchill one day through diplomatic channels, saying
America was ready to give up extra-territorial ity. And the British
Foreign Officers just accepted — they didn't quite like it, but they
couldn't say no. That's what happened. And the customs, I took it
back. I took it back by legal means. And they didn't dare say
anything. And then they also gave up the settlements to China. In
other words, they would allow China to take back the settlements and
govern them by Chinese, not by the foreign, authorities. So, after
the war, although China did not win it, China gained back control
over the Shanghai, Tientsin, Hankow, Chungking settlements, and all
the others.

Meanwhile, a lot of Chiang K'ai-shek's troops, his men, his
secret police, his hangers on, and politicians, they wanted to get
their fingers in the pie. They wanted to get something out of it.
They were not like me, you know, trying to work to regain China's
rights and things of that kind. They were after money. They wanted
something. So the Shanghai police, for instance, were replaced with
Chiang K'ai-shek's police. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whether
under the Peking government or not, always appointed men to staff
legations and embassies who were worthy of the job, who knew
something about the job, with experience, and so on. But after the
war all these people who staffed the embassies and consuls abroad
were Chiang K'ai-shek's disciples — uneducated people, but who went
through some of those schools established by Chiang K'ai-shek. They
were all Kuomintang members. You see, when I went to Moscow by way

171

of Teheran, the Chinese embassador of Teheran received us and
offered us his hospitality. I found from the ambassador down, all
stupid, ignorant people.

And there's another very interesting incident. I was in
Nanking. I think it was in 1931, maybe '32, '33. I had dinner with
Sir Reginald Johnston, English tutor to [former Emperor] P'u-i. He
was an Oxford man. I was invited to dinner, and he was also a
guest. During the dinner he rose up. He said, "Excuse me, I have
to go see T. V. Soong." Before the dinner was over, he came back.
I asked him, "What did you go there for?" He said T. V. Soong asked
him to bring P'u-i, his pupil, back to Nanking. At that time P'u-i
was in residence in the Japanese settlement in Tientsin. "And what
did you tell T. V. Soong?" He said — you know, he came to Shanghai
after having seen P'u-i in Tientsin, and he was on his way back to
England. He said he told T. V. this, "If P'u-i had asked him to do
that, he would do it." In other words, he wouldn't do it because T.
V. Soong asked him to do it. How could he go there and say, "You go
to Nanking" without authority? You see, he couldn't do it. That's
not quite right. So T. V. was making a very stupid request. T. V.
could ask him to go back to P'u-i with a message from him and try to
see whether he could persuade him to go to Nanking. Maybe that was
possible. That shows how stupid T. V. Soong, Chiang K'ai-shek,
those people were. Although T. V. was my boss I had no respect for
him because of these things. He was no statesman. Well, that's
what happened.

Comment on Japanese Ambitions in China

Chang: When T. V. asked Johnston to perform that mission and was refused,

the Nanking government must have had some sort of intelligence about
the Japanese possibly making use of P'u-i. They ought to have
known, but they didn't do it in time. It was the Nanking
government's fault — stupid. The National government was stupid. It
ought to have known that whether it liked a monarchy or not, it was
a historical national policy. It should have seen to it that P'u-i
was well treated so that he would not be induced by the Japanese to
return to Manchukuo. And that the government failed to do that —
Kuomintang — stupid !

Another thing, after the Lukou Ch'iao [Marco Polo Bridge]
incident [on July 7, 1937], Japan was controlling more and more of
China. Japan was bent upon a policy not only of occupying China.
It also launched the policy of trying to usurp Chinese culture,
Confucian culture. How? You see, K'ung Te-Ch'eng, a direct lineal
descendant of Confucius, was still alive in China, and they never

172

paid any attention to him. the Kuom intang. Stupidl That's why I
never supported them, the Kuomintang. You know, every dynasty from
the Han dynasty down, even those Manchus, a foreign dynasty, the
Yuan foreign dynasty, they all respected Confucius. They all
observed and adopted the Confucian classics. During the Ch'ing
dynasty, the direct lineal descendant of Confucius was made a duke.
Yen-sheng Rung — Yen-sheng Duke. He was given this offical title and
also this official post in order to carry on the duty of making
offerings at the tombs of his ancestors. For instance, if President
Carter went to a foreign country, he would lay a wreath on the tomb
of the unknown soldier. Same thing, you know. K'ung Te-ch'eng, the
lineal descendant, would make offerings at stated occasions to
Confucius in respect. So, I think finally before the Japanese
occupation of the whole of the seaboard province of China, all of a
sudden, the National government woke up and they made K'ung Te-
ch'eng. now in Taiwan, now a feng shih kuan, an official in charge
of making the ceremonial offerings to Confucius. It woke up to
that. So, finally when the government went to Taiwan he went with
them. Otherwise, the Japanese might have induced him to go to
Japan. Well, there's other evidence that my speculation was
correct. Of course, it is my speculation. How? In Tokyo there was
a Confucian temple. But after the Meiji reform, they boarded it up.
No one was allowed to enter. There was a fence around the Confucian
temple. But after the war, when I visited Tokyo, I visited this
Confucian temple. It was remodeled, brand new, and the fence was
all gone. They were preparing for that event, to bring K'ung Te-
ch'eng back and say, "Now, I represent Chinese culture." Chinese
culture, centuries of Chinese culture was to move to Tokyo — no
longer in Nanking or Peking.

F. P. : Do you think that that was also a way of gaining legitimization in
Manchuria?

Chang: Yeah, yeah, you see, the Japanese were very ambitious. They were
saying, "We will not only occupy China, conquer China, and rule
China," but they foresaw — they were educated people, the Japanese —
they foresaw all dynasties from after Ch'in, from Han down, every
dynasty even foreign, was based upon Confucian culture. Now they
could say, "Well, the center's here; you come to me." Oh, that's
very ambitious. And not only ambitious, that's why the Japanese are
very ch'e-ti — what do you call it, "go to its roots," thorough.
That's why when they make a car. they may make it better than
Americans. They go to the bottom 1 But finally they did not
succeed. This is my speculation, my guess. I have no other
evidence, and these are the few I offer.

P. P. : But that's very interesting, [laughter] So. what do you comprehend
in the area of Manchuria with respect to Japanese motives?

Chang: That was the first step. They controlled the railroad and certain
areas on either side of the road. They had industries and an army

173

there. And the first thing they wanted was to annex. I think they
wanted not only that, but emigration. But it didn't work. The
Japanese people did not want to go to Manchuria. If the Japanese
people were fond of Manchuria, there would have been a minority
province in Manchuria. Happily or fortunately, the Japanese people
didn't want to go there, [laughter] You see, they didn't succeed in
the emigration policy. Their idea was to annex, control Manchuria.
You see, all this was done — the Japanese were very smart; they
wanted to outdo the West. They said, "All right, the West, the
white race, English, American, French, Russians, and so on, you came
to Asia. Now I want to drive you out, and I'll replace you." You
see, this way, Japan said, "Well, China, you couldn't drive them
out. I'll drive them out. But if I drive them out, I do not want
you to recover it, I will control it." That was their idea. No
question about that. Well, that would be just copying the West.
The Western powers extended their colonialism, their control over
the railroads and mines, and so on, by virtue of their gun power,
fire power. Therefore, Japan said, "I'm going to use the same
medicine to confront you, to do what you have done to me." That's
what they were doing. And now after the war, Japan no longer builds
weapons, they have no atomic bomb, they are using the economic
weapon to fight. They succeeded. That's very smart.

Siberian High Commission

Chang: You see, in China, the Englishmen were very haughty. They thought
they were superior. In Shanghai, the clubs — the French Club, the
British dub — they excluded the Chinese, who were not allowed. But
as early as 1928, the American dub in Shanghai formally invited me
to j oin it. I declined, I turned it down. I didn't care. I said,
"I don't want it." You see, why invite only me? Why not invite
everybody? Because I hold a position and so on, they wanted to
invite me to join the club. I turned it down. So I think the
Russians were not — The Russians and Chinese, they get along on
equal terms. Am I right? I don't know.

F. P. : Well, yes, yes. It corresponds with what has been going.... What
were your impressions of Harbin at that time?

Chang: Well, it was almost a Russian town. I ate my first Borsch in
Harbin 1 You know, they invited me. I said I wanted to eat
something Russian. They invited me — it's excellent, excellent soup,
borsch! [laughter] That's my memory of Harbin.

F. P. : But what about the Chinese authorities there? Did you have any
chance to speak with them?

174

Chang: The point is this, you see. After the war, because of the Russian
revolution in Siberia, I think, the Japanese, on the pretext of
wanting to fight the Communists, to prevent them from occupying
Siberia, they wanted to enter Siberia with their own troops.
President Wilson countered it. He couldn't stop them. He said,
"All right, if you do, we all do. You cannot do it alone." So
England, France, the United States and China, all sent troops into
Siberia, supposedly to stop the socialization of Siberia. And
that's how each country sent a high commission.

I was secretary to the Chinese Commission. We stayed in
Vladivostok. While we were in Vladivostok, there was a dispute
between the Russian and the Chinese governments. By treaty between
Russia, Czarist Russia, and China, China had the right to navigate
on the river. That is, you know, China could send in her ships and
boats from somewhere along the Amur to Harbin. You know, you could
reach the sea by river by way of Harbin. In Communist Russia, even
the common people who were in authority in Siberia were stopped.
The government controlled the Amur River. You had no right to
navigate it.

F. P. : Did they give any reasons for it?

Chang: Well, that was their claim under the treaty. Of course, the Chinese
side didn't agree. China sent not only the army, but also some
gunboats to Harbin by sea, and they were stopped at Khabarovsk.

F. P. : Khabarovsk.

Chang: Midway, stopped.

F. P. : Which year was this?

Chang: 1920 or something like that. Stopped by the Russian authority. I
forgot all those names of the Russian generals. Anyway, the
stopping is not important. The important thing is, when you're
stopped it's frozen, frozen solid, you see, and no supplies. That
was the problem. No supplies, they could starve. So, the Chinese
commander, admiral, of the fleet — the admiral was already in Harbin.
He wanted his boats to reach Harbin by way of the Amur. So, he had
his son-in-law, who was an M.I.T. man who knew me, come to see me in
Vladivostok. He said, "Could you do anything to help my father-in-
law? This gunboat business." I said, "How could I help? You
couldn't help yourselves?" He said, "You are associated with the
American High Commission. Can't America say a fair word? You know,
we have the right to navigate."

So I talked to Mr. Smith, the American High Commissioner. We
were on very friendly terms because he just couldn't get along very
well with the British or the French. Whereas I could get on very

F. P.:

Chang :

F. P.:
Chang:

175

well with the British, with Hockson, and with the French High
Commissioner. And my boss spoke Russian but did not speak English.
So, in our work with the British, the American and Japanese, my boss
had to depend on me. And the Japanese, a Matsudaira — he later
became ambassador to the Court of Saint James — he spoke English, so
I did all his talking! So I talked with this Smith, and somehow
Smith — you see, the Americans had more influence than the Chinese
over the Russians. So, he talked to the Russians, and finally they
allowed supplies to go in. And not only that, allowed the ships
strangled at Khabarovsk to go to the sea through Harbin. That's
what I did. So, when I left Vladivostok, while I was in Harbin on
my way back, I was staying in a railroad car. My destination was
Peking, you know. The admiral of the fleet and all the high
officials in Harbin gave me a grand dinner. I was their guest,
[loud laughter] That's how they invited me. Later on that admiral
was kicked out by Chang Tso-lin because Chang Tso-lin thought he was
Wu P'ei-fu's man. You know politics. When he was kicked out, he
came to Peking. He came to see me when I was president of Chiao-
t'ung University. His daughter is here.

Sino-Soviet Relations

Did you have any impressions of Russian politics in Harbin when you
were there?

Well, my impression was this. I think Russia sent a man by the name
of Karakhan to tell China Russia was the first one to r cliquish the
unequal treaties. But after announcing that, Russia relented, and
then Karakhan had to go back to China and renegotiate. I didn't
follow those things. At that time I need not follow those detailed
negotiations.

But what sort of reaction —

The reaction was, you may say, as a man who never knows the whole
history but just from the papers, I think China resented Communist
Russia's duplicity. They did not mean what they said. China was
cheated! And not only that, you know, Stalin, the Third
International, they bribed Peita students. They paid students at
Peita, Peking University, twenty Chinese dollars a day to go out on
the Peking streets to give soap — what do you call it? — soap-box
talks, to try to recruit people for the Communist cause. And you
may know the Li Ta-chiao case. He was killed, executed by Chang
Tso-lin. You know that case?

F. P. : I know vaguely.

176

Chang: It's this way. This is what happened. You see, that was sometime
in '27. Chang Tso-lin was a Ta-yuan-shuai, generalissimo, in
Peking. He was the controlling authority in Peking. They knew that
the Russian embassy was conducting subversive activities in Peking,
and they knew many of the Peking students and professors were
involved. So one night — You see, the Chinese police were not
allowed into the legation headquarters — not allowed — because of
extra-territorial rights. But Chang Tso-lin knew the Russian
legation in Peking was conducting these subversive activities. He
got permission from the authority in the legation, without the
knowledge of the Russians, to enter the embassy. So one night Chang
Tso-lin's police entered. Now this was not at the Russian legation
proper. You see the legation had a barracks. They were given the
right by the 1901 treaty to station guards to protect themselves in
the legation. So the Russian Embassy had attached to it a barracks
for the troops. Chang Tso-lin's police entered the barracks and
arrested over twenty persons, both men and girls, all Peking
University students and professors. And the leader was a Li Ta-
chiao. He had equal rank, not only equal, superior rank even to Mao
Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung, you see, worked as a clerk in the Peking
University library. Li Ta-chiao was a professor. Li Ta-chiao and
all the others, about twenty or so, were tried and killed, executed
in Peking. That was 1927.

F. P.: Now there were two raids, two major raids on Soviet Consulates. One
was at Peking and the other one in Harbin.

Chang: That one in Harbin I do not know. I never heard of it.

F. P.: But did you have impressions regarding the seizure of documents in
Peking at least?

Chang: No, no. You see, I just know that it happened. I learned in this
way. I have a friend who was also a Harvard man. He was the
President of the Customs College in Peking. And before that he was
also a professor at Peking University. He came down after this
execution to tell me about the incident. He and Li Ta-chiao were
colleagues, you see. He knew him. But he did not tell me the exact
details. He only told me what I told you. I do not know the
details.

F. P.: He didn't elaborate at all?

Chang: No, no, no. I do not know the details. I only know what happened.
And this I presumed was true. He told me this. And he also told
another Yale man, Rang — I forgot his name, it's been so many years —
who was on his way. But he was deterred on the way, and he was not
caught. If he had been caught he would have been killed, [laughter]
I know him, a Yale man. [laughter]

177

F. P.: Now, one other matter of conflict, and that is the 1929 Sino-Soviet
incident.

Chang: Which incident?

F. P.: The border incident in Manchuria. Do you have any recollection of
that?

Chang: I do not know what that was about.

F. P. : When Soviet troops moved into Manchuria, into the first few
stations, as a result of the conflict over the railroad.

Chang: Oh, I don't know. I don't know that incident.

F. P.: What about Sino-Soviet relations during the '20's?

Chang: Well, you see, Sino-Russian relations were this way. China

considered it was cheated out of a big part of Siberia. You know
[the treaty of] Nerchinsk [in 1689]? Something like that. It was
all done by the Manchus at that time. And the man who signed the
treaty was a high Manchu official. The Chinese consider him a nut
to have done that, you know. It was not fair for him to sign such a
treaty. Of course after that, during the Peking warlord regime,
although the people thought that way, they never entertained any
notion they wanted to reverse it at that time. No such notion.
They said the past is past. They didn't like it though. This also
was part of Western imperialism.

Transcriber: Rhoda Chang
Final Typist: Richard Shapiro

178

IV CONVERSATION BETWEEN VIRGINIA KEAN. RHODA CHANG AND CHANG FU-YUN
[Interview Date: June 30. 1976]

Asia Foundation

Chang: Now I'll tell you about Asia Foundation. It was a front for the
CIA.

Kean: Really?

Rhoda: How did you find that out?

Chang: You see. I found out this way. I was one of the upper echelon

employees, a rather high position. I had access to the books. They
had $6.000.000 to spend every year. They advertised themselves to
be a non-profit corporation. Their money came from contributions
from foundations like Ford, the Carnegie Foundation, and also —

Kean: Where did the $6.000.000 come from?

Chang: — from the public. But I never saw the Asia Foundation do any
fund raising. I only knew they had $6.000.000 to spend.

Kean: Every year you had exactly $6.000.000?

Chang: Yes. about $6.000.000. So I was beginning to be suspicious. The

reason I joined the Asia Foundation was this way. I waited one year
in Hong Kong for my visa to go to the United States. You know, they
wanted to screen me from top to bottom. They want to know when you
were born and your history since you were born. And finally, I got
the visa to come here under State Department auspices. That way I
was going to Harvard. Now I happened to know a Mr. Green. He was a
Michigan man. He was an officer of the First National City Bank in
Shanghai. You know, the parent was in New York. We met socially at
the Consul General's parties. Somehow he was impressed with my
position, as well as my prestige and reputation in China. You see,
in China everybody knew me, not only Chinese but also the diplomatic
corps from the British Ambassador down. They all knew me. Not only
did they know me, but sometimes they feared me. [laughter] Because
I am the power over their nationals in the Customs service,
[laughter] So somehow, this Mr. Green formed a good opinion of me.

179

This Mr. Green knew I was in Hong Kong. He invited me to come
work for Asia Foundation. He said, "Come." I said, "I'm waiting
for my visa." He said, "Why should you wait? You can come at our
invitation." I said, "No, I already received word from Saltonstall
my application to come to the United States had already gone through
the State Department." I had to go through with that first. That's
how I came. But after I came I called upon Green, who was at that
time director of Asia Foundation. I said, "Since my passage was
paid by the State Department, and also my status entitles me to
bring my family, I have to go to Washington to report to the State
Department." They had made all sorts of arrangements for me, and I
wanted to get released from that understanding. So they paid my
passage to Washington, I went to the State Department and I saw a
Dr. Fisher. He was in charge of the Foreign Intellectuals Program
in the State Department which enabled me to come to the United
States with my family.

They assigned me a girl to take me around. I don't believe
that girl was like Elizabeth Ray. [laughter] They wanted to give me
a treat. She took me to see Arlington National Cemetery, the
Washington Monument, and all over town, just as a treat. Not only
that, when I arrived in Washington, they sent a girl to meet me at
Union Station. But she missed me. They sent a girl to meet me and
that girl missed mel [loud laughter] So the State Department was
not so efficient. She couldn't even recognize a Chinese face. You
see, if I were a Westerner, it would have been very easy to miss me
because she had never met me. But I'm the only yellow face and she
missed me. So I got a taxi and went to the State Department myself.
I told him when I met with Dr. Fisher, The Asia Foundation wanted
me to join them instead of following your program of going to
Harvard. Will that be all right?" Fisher said he could not decide.
He said that decision had to be made by somebody at an upper level.
So he referred me to a Mr. Connors, higher than he.

I told him this Mr. Green wanted me to work for the Asia
Foundation instead of going to Harvard. Going to Harvard meant
doing some research, maybe some teaching. At that time I did not
yet know exactly what they were doing at the Asia Foundation. He
said, "It's all up to you, whatever you want to do." I said, "I'm a
Chinese gentleman. Since I came under your auspices on this
understanding, and you have made this arrangement, I do not want to
deviate from that, if you feel I should not. That's why I consult
you. I want your opinion as to what would be the best thing for me
or for you. What should I do." And finally he said, "Okay,
probably Asia Foundation is better." Well, Asia Foundation was more
actively involved in doing propaganda work. Then I went to see Dr.
Fisher again and he instructed a Miss Bauman, a Wellesley girl, she
was in charge, to make the arrangements. So she telephoned to the
Dean of Harvard School of Public Administration, a Dean Morgan or
Dean Mark. She said, "Fu-yun Chang is here, who by arrangement was
coming to you. Would you release him?" He said, "We have no

180

Rhoda :
Chang:

Rhoda:
Chang:

Kean:
Chang:

objection. And whenever he wants to come back, we welcome him
back." So Harvard had no objection, provided I didn't stay too
long. So Miss Bauman said, "Okay, everything's fine." After that I
went to say goodbye to Dr. Fisher. You see, although I came to the
United States under the auspices of the State Department and my trip
was paid by the department. I'm still a visitor, I'm not a permanent
resident. I know the law. So I asked Dr. Fisher. "How long could I
stay here? One year?" It's usually six months and could be
extended for another six months and maybe another six, but not
without end. You know what he said? "So far nobody like you has
been pushed out of this country." [laughter] That's Dr.Fisher,
State Department, [loud laughter]

After you left Asia Foundation why didn't you go back to Harvard?

Well, you see. I stayed with Asia Foundation for two years or so.
By that time, you know, if I wanted to go to Harvard, I would have
to renew my request, and they may not agree, you know. You see, if
I went to Harvard, the State Department pays me. Harvard doesn't pay
me. And by that time the State Department would probably no longer
pay me. If I went, I would have to go on my own. I had no money.
Also, Harvard would have to accept me.

I thought they said you could come back whenever you want to.

Well, that means a short term, say six months or one year,
all right, but after two or three years they won't do it.

That's

I'm glad in a way, you see. Well, no one knows what your
destiny would be. If I had gone to Harvard, maybe I would have had
a happier life. On the other hand, if I had gone to Harvard. I
don't know. You see, these so-called authorities on China, they are
very jealous, very suspicious. They always feel they are the
authority, they know best. They never believe that a Chinese,
however educated, you know, in the American sense, the Chinese
sense, can be better than an American. That's their prejudice. So
I'm not so sure in such a case I would feel happy. Now. although
I'm a poor man. by being with the Asia Foundation for so many
quarters, I earned my social security. You see, I'm not
independent. I'm poor, but I can live on my social security. I'm
all right. If I had gone to Harvard, you see, in all these places
there are politics. You know what I mean?

Yes. that's true.

You see, I have a lot of experience. In China. I gained back for
China what China lost to the powers. I fought England, Japan, all
these imperialists. I won. And I do not want to be under the thumb
of people who are ignorant, you know. So I'm satisfied. I'm happy
now. Since, you see. you people are all on your own I'm all right.

181

APPENDIX I: INTERVIEW OUTLINES

INTERVIEW #1 (CHILDHOOD)

I. Basic family information.

A. Parents' background and occupation.

Age of father when Chang was born? Was father a landowner?

B. Brothers, sisters and other close relatives.

How many? Names? Number of generations in household?

C. Length of time family had resided in Fushan.

What kind of a place was Fushan? Small? Large? Rural?

II. Life at home during childhood.

A. Description of home and household.

Who looked after children? Mother or servant? Size of
home and household? Number of servants/hired help?
Meals: What did family eat/cook? Rules at mealtime?

B. Early education.

1. Did family have a private school and teacher?
Size of classes?

2. Shih-i Academy, Chefoo.

3. Types of instruction.

Discipline/obedience? Personal instruction? How long
was school year? How long was school day? Describe
it.

4. When and how did a Western education become an

alternative?

Did he prepare for both Western and traditional Chinese
exams? When did he first begin to learn English?
From missionaries?

C. Childhood friends.

D. Family entertainment.

1. Childhood games and toys.

2. Festivals, such as New Year's and Ch'ing Ming.
Traveling theaters? Historical plays?

E. Religious practices.

Confucianism? Buddhist? Christian? Superstitions?

F. Childhood illnesses and medical practices.
Medicines: Chinese or Western? Both?

G. Travels.

For example if father was government official. Mode of
travel? Inns and restaurants? Bandits?

III. Effects of political and environmental events on family and

childhood.
A. Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895.

How was 1895 defeat interpreted in village?

182

B. Reform effort of 1898.

Father's reactions to Rang Yu Wei. et al.

C. Borer Rebellion. 1899-1900.

Attitude of family toward Boxers. Any indications of

revolutionary thought in activities in hometown prior to
1911. Attitudes toward foreigners and foreign
innovation, etc. Boycott of American goods in 1905 over
discrimination against Chinese laborers in U.S.

D. Natural disasters, such as drought, flood or famine.
1898-Yellow River burst dikes. 1900-North China famine

calamities blamed on foreigners who offended spirits by
propagating heterodox religion.

INTERVIEW 12 (EDUCATION)

I. Boxer Indemnity Scholarship.

A. Application and preparation for the examination.

B. Examination and results.

II. Ch'ing Hua College.

A. Student life at Ch'ing Hua.

1. Student organizations.

2. Political and social activities.

3. Friends made at Ch'ing Hua and their possible later

significance in your life.

B. Curriculum.

III. Voyage abroad.

A. Description of the trip.

B. First impressions and experiences in the United States.
How was he accepted to Harvard? Did he apply in China?

IV. Harvard University.

How did Boxer Indemnity Scholarship work in practice? Did
Chinese government pay tuition, board, etc.? Or U.S.
government?

A. Life at Harvard for a Chinese student.
Atmosphere at Harvard during WWI?

1. Student organizations, such as the Harvard Diplomatic
(Hub and Chinese Students' Alliance.

2. Friends and their possible later significance.
Particularly influential professors?

B. Curriculum.

Why did you choose law as a profession?

C. Awards received while at Harvard.

D. How did your education at Harvard and the years you spent

in the United States affect your view of China's problems
vis-a-vis the West and your own cultural tradition?
Reaction to revolution of 1911?

183

V. Activities in the U.S. between graduation from law school and

return to China.
A. Did you travel in the United States?

INTERVIEW #3 (SERVICE AT MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS)

I. General.

A. How did you come to be employed by Wai-chiao Pu?

B. What positions did you hold?

C. What were your duties and responsibilities?

D. How was the office organized?

E. Who were your superiors and co-workers?

II. Peking politics and the Wai-chiao Pu.

A. Effects of factional strife between Anfu, Chin-li and

Feng-tien cliques on the conduct of foreign relations and
the internal functioning of the Wai-chiao Pu.

1. Period of Anfu clique domination after August, 1918.

2. Period of Chih-li-Feng-tien clique domination after

July. 1920.

B. Japanese attempts to gain further influence over Shangtung

in September, 1918.

III. Lectureship at National Peking University in 1918.

A. Was this in conjunction with the Wai-chiao Pu or a separate

position?

B. What did you lecture about?

C. Comments on student activism? For example, protests over

Sino-Japanese Military Mutual Assistance Conventions in
March, 1918.

IV. Chinese High Commission in Siberia.

A. What was the purpose of the High Commission?

B. Who were the members of the High Commission?

C. What were your duties as secretary?

D. Was the High Commission related to Chinese participation in

Siberian intervention against the Bolshevik revolution in
August, 1918?

V. Any other comments about your life in Peking during this

period.

A. Where and how you lived?

B. Friends?

C. Etc.

184

KEY TO BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

1. Who's Who in China, 3rd Edition. Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 192

3. Who's Who in China, 5th Edition. Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 19:

*•

5.

(1937)

7 - J;

185
WHO'S WHO IN CHINA

27

Mr. Chang Fu-Yun

Mr. ('hang Fu-Yun was born in 1890 in Fu Shan Hsien, Shantung, and
sttulii-d in the Sliili Yi Acadi-niy. I'hc'f'io, urn! in Tsing Hua College, Pek
ing. lie was graduated in i'.ll-l frmr. Harvard College with the degree of
of A.I;. I-U,K Iniuli". in 1!>17 from tlir Harvard Law .School with tlie degree
of LL. K., and while in s^hiiol was a memlier of the Diplomatic Club of
Haivard University, and president of the Chinese Students Alliance in the
U. S. A., 1917-1918. Upon his return to China he joined the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs in 1918, and also served as lecturer in International Law
in the Peking Government University. He was Secretary of the Chinese

High Commission in Siberia, 1919-1920, and served as secretary to the
Chinese Delegation to the Washington Conference 1921-22. Upon his re
turn he became director of the Marine Department of the Ministry of Com
munications, 1922-1923, in which capacity he advocated and took part in
the drafting of marine laws for China. He has been President of the Un
iversity of Communications since 1923, and has received the 2nd Class Ta
Shou Paokuang Chia Ho Decoration.

186

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187

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188

HARVARD CLASS OF 1914

EMMETT KIRKEND\LL CARVER

ALFRED IHTONT CHANDLER

Fl VLN CHANG

from Harvard Class of 1914, 25th Anniversary Report, Cosmos Press

189

25TH ANNIVERSARY REPORT

Since then I have been handling some family trusts, trying to get
jobs, attempting to make some of the poor stocks I chanced to have
more valuable, doing a little political work and generally enjoying
life as it comes along. My children in particular are an unending
source of excitement and amusement. Just now in addition to my
other duties, I am chairman of the Race Committee of Nantucket
Yacht Club.

MEMBER OF: Harvard Club of New York City; Harvard Club of
Boston; Nantucket Yacht Club, Nantucket, Mass.

FU-YUN CHANG

BORN: Fu Shan Hsien, Shantung, lit Moon (Lunar Calendar) 2 8th. 1890.

(Apple Face). PARENTS: Yiu Peng Chang, King Tsui Sun.
PREPARED AT: Tsing Hwa College, Peking, China.

YEARS IN COLLEGE' 1911-1914. DEGREES: A.B. cum laude, 1914; LL.B., 1917.
MARRIED: Kuo Chin Li, Tientsin, China, Sept. I, 1923.
OCCUPATION : Lawyer. Director, Bank of Canton.
ADDRESS: 140 Route Gustavide Boinezon, Shanghai, China.

ATER college I attended the Harvard Law School, graduating
in 1917. Prevented by the great war from going to an English
or European University, I spent the following year in the Law School,
interesting myself mainly in International Law, Constitutional Law,
and Jurisprudence.

I returned to China in the fall of 1918 to find that a republic had
taken the place of the monarchy. My intention had been not the
practice of law, but the modernization of China's antiquated juris
prudence, and the establishment of constitutional government. Fail
ing to find the opportunity for the pursuit of my aims, I availed my
self of an offer to join the Foreign Office. From then on it has seemed
as if I have not been free to choose what to do.

I was sent as secretary to the Chinese High Commissioner in
Siberia, 1919-1920, and served as secretary to the Chinese Delega
tion to the Washington Conference, 1921-1922.

I was director of the Marine Department, 1922-1923, and presi
dent of the University of Communications, 1923-1925.

During all those years China was moving slowly. Though my
training and knowledge would qualify me for a marked out career in
the West, they could not be given free play in China, where inertia
and difficulties had to be overcome and adjustments between the old
and new had to be made.

£133]

190

HARVARD CLASS OF 1914

When the National Government came into power I became its
director-general of Customs and chairman of the Tariff Commission.
I took part in the negotiation of the Tariff Treaties, which restored
to China her tariff autonomy, and guided the formulation of the
first National Autonomous Tariff.

I was a member of the Advisory Committee of the National Eco
nomic Council, 1934-1938.

In 1937 I went to London as counsellor of the Chinese Delegation
to attend the Coronation of King George VI. I visited Edinburgh,
Oxford and Cambridge, and the Southwark Cathedral, in which
was a Harvard Chapel.

I was returning home by way of America, and landed in New
York in August. I paid a visit to Cambridge to see Harvard and
some of my old friends. I followed a student guide and visited the
new Memorial Chapel and one of the Houses. Though there were
new additional buildings, yet Harvard did not seem to have changed.
I was very sorry most of my old professors were then out of town, but
I did succeed in calling on Prof. Eugene Wambaugh, whose parting
words to me were "I am absolutely neutral (in the China conflict)
but I wish you luck."

I had wished to call on our new president, Mr. Conant, but he
was also out of town. However, I did motor to Cotuit, and had a
talk with ex-President Lowell, whom I found still vigorous in mind
and body.

I spent seven years in Cambridge. During those my student days,
I had to work fairly hard, and life was also hard, as I had to find my
own salvation and to look for no sympathy or mercy. Nevertheless,
Harvard had given me a free mind, and taught me to be free and
humane, and to work for the advancement of human welfare.

As things are at present, I shall regret very much my inability to
attend the class reunion.

LEWIS STUYVESANT CHANLER, JR.

BORN: Seabright, N. J., July 3, 1891. (Stuyve). PARXNTI: Lewi* Stuyvesant

ChanJer, Alice Chamberlain.
PREPARED AT: Eton College, England.
YEARS IN COLLEGE: 1910-1914. DECREE: A.B., 1914.
MARRIED: Leslie Murray, New York, N. Y., Apr. 17, 1930. CHILDREN: Susan.

Jan. 10, 1921; Branson Winthrop, Sept 6, 1922; Clare, Nov. 15, 1937;

Rotanna, Aug. 7, 1929.

191

110 HARVARD CLASS OF 1914

Delaware, as well as the Coffee House in New York and the Nan-
tucket Yacht Club."

Home and Office Address, 2500 Montchanin Rd., Wilmington,
Del.

FU-YUN CHANG was born in China in 1890, the son of Yiu Pen
and King Tsui Sun. He prepared at Tsing Hwa College, Peking,
China, and received an A.B., cum laude, in 1914, and an LL.B.
in 1917, both at Harvard. His marriage to Li Kuo Chin ended
in divorce in May, 1940, and on August 7, 1940, in Shanghai, he
married Eva Yeh Yih Hwa. They have three children: Julia Chih
Hiang, born March 2, 1942; Rhoda Chih An, born September 28,
1947; and Samuel Chih Kwang, born July 19, 1949. Chang an
educator, diplomat, and administrator, writes:

"Returning to China in 1918, 1 intended to enter the profession
of law and become a constitutional lawyer. But at that time
China, though a Republic had no constitution, and the profession
of law was new and held more or less in contempt. Accordingly,
I entered government service. I held the following appointments
and positions:

"Lecturer on law at Peking University; secretary to Chinese
High Commission in Siberia; secretary and afterwards counsellor
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; director of Department of
Marine, Ministry of Communications; president of College of
Public Administration, Peking (Chiao Tung); member of Com
mission on Extraterritoriality; director general of the National
Customs Administration; chairman of the National Tariff Com
mission; counsellor to the Chinese Delegation attending King
George VTs Coronation; special assistant to chairman of China
Defense Supplies Corporation, Washington, D.C.; adviser to
Chinese Delegation attending the United Nations Organization
Meeting in San Francisco; member of Chinese Mission to Mos
cow, who negotiated with Soviet Russia on the Yalta Agreement;
chairman of Commission on Enemy Property, which after the
Armistice sequestrated Japanese property in China and returned
the properties to their Allied owners which the Japanese con-

from Harvard Class of 1914, Fiftieth Anniversary Report, printed
at the University, Cambridge, Mass., 1964.

192

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT 111

fiscated in China; deputy chairman of Chinese Delegation to the
International Conference on Trade and Tariffs, held in Havana,
Cuba.

"After the Communist Party took over China, I left China and
came with my family in 1951 to the U.S.A. We are now all U.S.
citizens.

"As I look back, my source of deepest satisfaction may be said
to lie in the steady advance of wisdom, cooperation and increas
ing recognition of the futility of war on the part of the peoples
and nations of the world. When the First World War broke out
in 1914 I thought to myself: 'China's warring states were united
and brought under one system of government in 221 B.C. by the
first emperor of the Chin Dynasty and why could not the Euro
pean states do the same.' Now the ideal of a united Europe is a
political possibility.

"I remember in the 1910's President A. Lawrence Lowell ad
vocated a League to Enforce Peace. I attended his rallies. The
League of Nations was one form of what he had attempted to
create but without the means to enforce peace.

"The United Nations Organization is a better and more perfect
world organization, although it still does not possess the means
to enforce peace. It comprises all the independent nations of
the world except Red China. In it all the member states large
and small are equal.

"Who in 1914 could have imagined that such a development
would have become possible?

"It is my conviction that it is the task of education to teach
one not only to think straight but also to follow the dictates of
reason, which will lead men to pursue their true interests — the
"brotherhood of men' or 'within the four seas are brothers.' "

Home Address, 147 15th Ave., San Francisco, Calif.

LEWIS STUYVESANT CHANLER died August 2, 1963, at
Rhinebeck, New York. The son of Lewis Stuyvesant and Alice
(Chamberlain) Chanler, he was born July 3, 1891, in Seabright,
New Jersey. He attended Eton College in England, before

193
APPENDIX III: Name List for Chinese Student's Alliance Photograph

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90.

91.

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94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.

Chi T.-h.iung

Ti.o H.in-t.

Lu Yuan-chang &-•* <&

Uang Ysn-tsu

I ^ i.O

Hu Hauan-silng -kj^"of
•™ S™
Ch'u Shao-an ft J£i£

Chin Psng-cheng^ la -p
Tsang Kuang-chih <jp-&$E.-2
Ch'iu P'ei-
Ch'an Ch'an

I Ting-hain

Chang P'ang-ch'un
Chang Fu-yun
Ping

T'ang T'
Sun Vu-fang
Ch'«n Po-chuang
Sun Hauah-uu
LI Hou-ahan
Taao Hal-kang

113. Lu nin-hsing

114. Lo Hui-ch'iao
115.

116. Lo Hui-ch'iao

117. Chang Ting-chin

118. "Carl"
119.

120. Ta'ai

*

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122. Huang Po-ch1 in 4J f^ /j
123.

124. T'.ng

125. Ch'o C

126. Chang T'i«h-ju

127. Y.ng Yin-ch'

128. Kuo Shou-ch'un-^rjcJc i*

129. Ch'iu mi-ying^t ^ Ji;

130. Uang Chun-hao

131. Yu 3ih-chang

132. Chang Ch'ao-k'un « .li-^*,

133. Ch'iu Ch'ang-yun-t

134. Uang Chang-fu

135. Chang Yuan-hsi

^ «

From a list compiled by
Chao Yuen-jen

194a

The Chang Exhibition

Harvard University Art Museums, Spring 1987.

Chinese painting and calligraphy collected by the late Chang Fu-yun,

Chang Fu~Yun

Biographical Notes

Fu-Yun Chang as a Freshman student Harvard 1910

Bom 1890. Che Foo. China

A.B Harvard Law School. 1917.

Lecturer on International Law. Peking University. 1918-
1919

Member of the Legal Committee on Extra-territorialjuris-
diction. 1920-1922

President of the University of Communications. Peking.
1922-1925

Director General of the Customs Administration and con
currently Chairman of the National Tariff Commis
sion. 1927-1932.

Member of the Advisory Committee of the National Econ
omic Council 1933-1937

Special Assistant to the Chairman of the China Defence
Supplies. Washington. DC. 1943- 1944

Resident Consultant at Harvard University. 1944- 1945

Technical Expert on Law and Economics of the Chinese
Delegations to the United Nations Organization
Conference. San Francisco. 1945.

Legal Adviser to the Chinese Mission to Moscow. 1945.
which negotiated the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friend
ship on the basis of the Yalta Agreements.

Director General of the Customs Administration and con
currently Chairman of the National Tariff Commis
sion. 1945-March 1949

Deputy Chief Delegate of the Chinese Delegation to the
UN Conference on Tariff and Trade. Havana. 1947-
1948

Member of the Executive Committee of the Import and
Export Board. 1946-1948

EXHIBITION

194b

The Exhibition

I he Harvard University An Museums are plan
ning a special exhibition of selections of
_ | Chinese painting and calligraphy collected
by the late Chang Fu-yun (EY Chang) Scheduled for
the spring of 1987. the exhibition will be displayed in
the Oriental galleries of the newly completed Arthur
M. Sackler Museum.

Y. Chang, a native of Shantung province in
I eastern China, was one of the select group of
_ | Chinese students to be sent for higher edu
cation at Harvard, where he graduated in the Class of
1914. He went on to become the first Chinese student
to graduate from Harvard Law School (LLB 1917) After
his return to China, Mr. Chang put his advanced West
ern training in law, political science and economics at
the service of his country, working at a succession of
government posts at a time of considerable social and
political unrest in China.

1 1 was after his return to China that Mr Chang
began in earnest to collect art. Unlike man\
_ (other collectors. Mr. Chang did not concen
trate solely upon collecting the works of ancient
masters. Instead, he was interested in the painters and
calligraphers of his own day who were working in
traditional styles, and he gathered many scrolls and
fans by these contemporaries The heart of his collec
tion consists of works by artists active in the second
quarter of the 20th century, particularly the late 1 92(b
and early 1930s. Many of the fans and scrolls arc
inscribed by the artists with a dedication to Mr Chang
addressing him by his "courtesy name" Ching-wen

Chang's activity as a collector coincided
I with a period of ferment in Chinese painting
_ I By the 1920s, a handful of painters had studu d
in Paris and brought back concepts of Western art t<>
China, provoking a reaction from the more traditionally

-

* X

194c

oriented artists who rejected the new influences as
outlandish Mr. Chang's sympathies clearly lay with
the traditionalists, whom he perceived as the preserv
ers of a time-honored approach that represented the
best China had to offer-the styles of the educated
elite, or "literati" painters. In this tradition, the artist
placed his emphasis on the calligraphic line, rejecting
naturalistic or literal realism in representing land
scapes and figures, instead spontaneously "painting
the idea" behind the reality.

n addition to contemporary works, Mr. Chang
also collected examples of the calligraphy of
late Ch'ing political figures whom he admired.
One of these statesmen. Wang I-jung, was also a
scholar of epigraphy and was the first to recognize
the significance of inscribed "oracle bones" that were
found in large numbers near Anyang, the last capital
of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1523 B.C.-ca 1028 B.C.).
Two albums of Wang's personal letters will be on view,
revealing the private thoughts of this scholar- patriot,
written in calligraphy that is the "heart-print" of the
writer.

he planned exhibition will include paintings
and calligraphy by 20 different artists, repre
senting the scope of Mr. Chang's collection
and its highlights. Calligraphy in all the major script
types will be featured, including an example in "oracle-
bone script" by the famed antiquarian Lo Chen-yu (Fig.
1 ). Some of the calligraphy is written on paired hang
ing scrolls, intended to be displayed side by side or
flanking a doorway in the traditional Chinese home.

| aintings will be exhibited that represent a
variety of styles, from the fine-line mono-

| chrome of the pai-miao or "outline" style, to

the muted hues of landscapes in the "orthodox" mode,
to the exuberant primary colors and strong designs

of Ch'i Pai-shih's flower paintings (Fig. 2). Some of the
paintings are executed on folding fans, many of which
are complemented by elegant calligraphy on the
reverse. Other paintings are done in the vertical hang
ing-scroll format

I his exhibition will be the first for the Harvard
University Art Museums in the area of mod-

[ em Chinese painting and calligraphy, made
possible by the generous loan by Mr. Chang's family
of the works he treasured. A fully illustrated catalogue
by Dr. Julia K. Murray, Assistant Curator of Oriental Art.
will accompany the exhibition.

84 1984, Chinese calligraphy by Lo Chen-yu. oracle bone script,
hanging scroll. Loan to the Harvard University An Museums

194d

A Daughter's Memoir

y father Chang Fu-yun. Harvard College
class of 1914 and Harvard Law School class
of 1917, was a Chinese patriot, educator,
diplomat and statesman. The Communist revolution
of 1949 brought him to America in 1951 He took
with him his family, his clothes and his art collection
My father was not a practical man. He modeled his
life after the Confucian "wen j en" or "superior man,"
whose integrity mattered above all He did not believe
in power but thought wisdom more important He
wanted knowledge and read many books Success
did not drive him. and failure did not faze him.
What counted was character, a man's moral core If
a man was upright, all consequences of his life
would follow the path of order and harmony

y father cultivated the arts to become the
complete man. an ideal of the "wen ren"
Collecting was the next best thing to
actually making art. Unlike in the West, where
intellectuals talk about art while artists make it, in
China scholars made the art themselves. In Chinese
an painting and writing are one. and only scholars
could be competent in all matters pertaining to
poetry, calligraphy and painting Chinese art was
the manifestation of the culture and philosophy of
an elite scholar class

he collection of my father represents the
taste of a scholar-official very much
steeped in the values of the "wen ren" He
did not. however, possess the snobbery of the "older
the better" school He believed that the primary
consideration in favor of antiquity is rarity, not intrinsic
quality His collection, therefore, is almost exclu
sively of the an of his times and peers He did not
prize technical proficiency or professional virtuosity,
the way the professional painter showed his skill
Rather, he sought for his collection those qualities

that revealed the hallmarks of the "wen ren." an
expression of the highest levels of scholarship,
sensibility and painterly allusiveness

[his exhibition is a snapshot of a period of
Chinese history, a way of life that is no
longer. The collection represents the lives
and times of the scholar-artists who made their
culture, who were the living society of which their
art is the manifestation My father would be very
happy to know that his art. one of the last collec
tions of traditional connoisseurship representing the
scholarly ideal of Chinese society now dead, lives on
at Harvard, his alma mater.

Fu- Vtin Chang at his 50th college reunion 1964

195

GLOSSARY — CHANG FU-YUN

This glossary does not include proper names found in Arthur Hummel.
Eminent Chinese £f the Ch'ing Period (Washington, D. C. : U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1943-1944) or Howard L. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of
Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). Well-known ~
cities and the names of provinces have also been omitted.

An-fu
Chan Kuo
Chan Wei Hui
Chang
ch'ang

Chang Ching-chiang

df-=r
chang-ching "S f

^t" ^^w

Chao Kuo Ts'ai

Chang Fu-hai

Chang Fu- j ung

Chang Fu-lai

Chang Shu-chang chao-pan

Chang shu-chang ho
Chang Sun-shih
Chang Yeh I-hua [Eva]
Chang Yu-pen
Chao-chia lou
chao-fu
chao k'ao

chen

ch'en

Ch'en Chi-yun

Ch ' en Ch ' ing-pi ao

Chen Fang-shih

Ch'en Luan

Ch'en

Che'ng-chih Han-chien T'iao-li

cheng ch'u < -fty
Cheng Lai

Chi-hsun chu

chi-mu

Ch1 i-nien

Chiang-che

Chiang-nan Chih-tSjBo Ch'an

ch'iao

196

Chiao-t'ung Ta-hsueh

Chiao-t'ung Tsung-chang

chien

£v

Ch'ienFo
Ch'ien-men^ tt

chien- tu &A $£
BE ^

Ch'ien Tiu-ven

chih chih vei chih chih, pu chih wei
pu chih, shih chih ye

Chih-li hsi
Chin-ch'eng
Chin-p'u railway
chin- shih
Ch'in
Chin-shih kuan
Chin-yu Hu-tung
ching

Ch1 ing Hua ;
Ch' ing Hua Yuan
Ch'ing-ho
Ch'ing Ming

Ch1 ing-tang
Chou

Chu. T. S.

chu-shih
Ch'ui-lien-t1 ing-cheng

chun-chi ta ch'en

chun-tzu^gg- <
Chung-ho tien

Chung- tung lu

Chung-tung T'ieh-lu
.1

Chung-yang Rung-yuan

er-pai li

er wu f u chia

Fa-lu pien-ting kuan kuan-chang

Fang Tu

Feng p'iao

^T
feng-shih kuan^stj 3z.

Feng- tien hei
Feng [Yu-wei]

197

fu

fu-Ch1 ing mie-Yang

Fu chu

Fu-shu-chang
Hai-ts'an-wai
Hai-yang chen
Han

Han-ch'eng *
Han-lin
Han-yeh-p1 ing

Heng-chou
Hori Yoshiatsu

Hsi-ch'uan hsien N
v

HsiHu

Hsi Ta

Hsiang-ch'eng hsien

Hsiao-chan I ^ V

Hsieh Hung-tao

Hsi eh Tso-k'ai

hsien

hsien fa chih jen

hsin-ch'ou Tiao-yueh

Hsing-cheng Yuan 4j? -5*1 frfr

Hsing-fa 3K|

Hsing Hua Lou

hsing-shu

hsing-tsou

hsiu-ts'ai

Hsu Pao-huang

Hsueh pu

Hu Tun-fu

hua

huang-ku- tun

V /

i-chih

I- ho Ch ' uan *r

I-ho T'uan

I- ho Yuan

I-hsueh Kuan

i-tiao

jen

jen chih ch'u hsing pen shan

198

Kai-ta (Gaida)

K'ang Wu

-£
Kao En-heng J /e» },\

Kisbimoto

k-u.-t.ng

k'uai yu tai tien

Kuan— wu shu-chang

kuan-yu

Kuang

Kuang-chou wei

kung

Kung-tsu t'ing

kuo-fang

Kuo-ting-shui-tse Wei-yuan- hui Wei-
yuan-chang

kuo-tse

Kuo- tz e-chien

Kwan Wu Shu (Kuan Wu Shu)

la-pa-chou

1 a-y ueh

lang-sung
L.O

Li-£a yuan

Li Kuo-ch'in [Alice]
Li Lan-chou

Li Peng-fei
li-shang
Liang Kuang
ling-tung>g jfc
liu pu —
Lu Ken-chi
lu-shih/£

mai-kuo
mai-kuo- tse
Man -V

199

men- fang

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mien-ch'ang & gA
ming-sheng # -tfJt,
Nan-chang Chi eh -^ 6

Nan-p'i hsien

Nan- shu- fang hsing-tsou
Js*t

nei-ti

Nei-ti Shui-chu

niu 4^
Ni«

Pai Chia-ching

/

pai-hua y

Pao-t'u Qiuan
Pei-ching Ta-yhsueh

pei"ch'u
Pei-fa

Pei-hai>t
Pei-ta

Pei-yang ^t. >*
Pei-yang chun J£j «« fe
Pei-yang Fa-hsueh IL ^

x^ / T

Pei-yang Hai-chun ,. W
Pei-yang ta-chen

^^

P'eng-lai 3? -xk
Pien-fang chun ^3-, ^

Pi en- ting Huo-chia Hui

pu-chang

P'u-kou

pu tsai chi wei. pu mou chi cheng

Pu-tung

pu-yau tso-kuan

San-tzu Ching * "V

— -^ <r

shan-hou ta-chieh-k'uan

shang-shu

shang ta jen k'ung i chi

She-chi tan

T:

shen-chia-ch1 ing-pai

200

sheng

Shigemitsu Mamoru "Jg

Shih-chiu Ta-tui

shih-kuan \, *$?
'£• 13
shih-lang /&, £a

Shih-wu ching

Shib-i Hsueh-kuan

Shih Yueh Hsin Yuan

Shui-wu Ch'u
Shui-wu Ch'u Tu-pan

#M&&1fl

Shui-wu Hsueh-hsiao

Shui-wu Tu-pan

Sung pan \

Ta Ch1 ing-Lrf*

Taiping

Tai-ahang Tsai-cheng-pu Chang

T'ang

T'ang Lu-yuan

T'ao

.N

Tao-men

tao-tai

t'e-wu

t1 i-i-chien

ti-i-ke

Tiao

.j

tiao-pu pan-shih

T1 ien-an Men
t'ien-t'an
Tientsin-Pukow
Ting. K. T.
ting-kuo-shih
Ts ' ai Rung- shi h
Ts'an-chan chun
Ts'an-i yuan

4

S

' an-shih-sh'ang^n*sing-tsou

Ts1 ao-chou f u

201

Ts'ao Yun-hsiang
Tsou Chia-lai
tsu-chi

i & ,^

. <£

tsung-pan

Tsung-shui-wu-szu
tsung-t'ung

1' <3

t'u-huo .

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Tu T'ving-tao

tuan tzu tui jen

Tuan-wu

tung '2>

.

Tung-chiao-min hsiang

Tung-hua Men

_^

Tung-mu Kung-nsueh

Tung Shan

T'ai-lu

Tung-tang-tsu hu-t'ung

tung-tao-chu

tung-yang ch'e

Tzu-cheng Yuan ^

JW

•£^f£

Wai-chiao Pu
Wai-wu Pu
wan J^
wan-Ch1 ing

wei chih sheng. yen chih ssu

Wei-hai-wei
wei-hsien
wen
wen-li

Wu Chiu-fang

Wu Hsien

Wu-hsu Cheng-pien Chi

Wu-hsu Pien-fa

wu-li t'ung-i

Wu-men 4r. ^-^
Wu-szu Yun-tung

202

yang
yang

V

Yang-wu Chu sj

yen

Yen-wu chi-hou BUO suo-chang

Yin Lan-sheng
Ying-k'o

Ying Pin-kuan

Huang Ting j- ^ -<^g

Yu

Yu-mei-hsueh-wu chu

yuan-lao
yueh-men
yueh-ping

Yueh-sheng
yung-chang-hsiang
Yung-ho tien .*

INDEX — CHANG FU-YUN

203

Aglen. Sir Francis. 111-113, 126.

129. 131
Asia Foundation. 178-180

Banker's Association (Peking), 131
Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, 10.

32-38, 41-42. 47-48. 70
Braud, A. C. E. . 134

Chang Chia-ngao (Chang Chia-ao),

126. 129, 131
Chang Fu-hai, 17
Chang Fu-jung, 16-17
Chang Fu-lai. 14
Chang Fu-yun

ancestral home. 1. 8
Communi cations University

(Peking), presidency of, 104,

156-158

Chinese Maritime Customs
Director General of. under

Nationalist Government, 113-

140. 147-151. 166-170
recovery of control over, 114,

116-140. 167-168
resignations from Directorship
of. (1932) 140-141. (1949)

151
under Wuhan Government, 104-

106. 160-162

Maritime Department, Ministry of
Communications, as Director of,

103. 153-154
National Tariff Commission, as

Chairman of. 113
Sun Yat-sen. meeting with, 103,

153-156

Wu P'ei-fu, interview with. 102
Chang Loy [Cheng Lai] , 142
Chang Po-ling, 54
Chang Yu-pen. 1-3, 21

Chao Kuo-tsai, 78

Ch'en Chi-yun, 43

Ch'en Fang-shih. 161

Ch'en Luan. 125

Ch'en Wen-hui. 10-11

Cheng Lai. See Chang Loy

Chiang Chieh-shih. See Chiang K'ai-

shek
Chiang K'ai-shek. 31. 106. 146.

149. 150. 162
letters suggesting corruption in

the Customs service. 168-171
Chang Fu-yun1 s observations on,

106. 162. 168-171
Chiao-tung Ta-hsueh. See

Communi cations University
China Defense Supplies.

Incorporated, 145
Chinese High Commission in Siberia,

91-95. 173
Chinese Maritime Customs. 14, 104-

106
Aglen, Sir Francis, dismissal of,

111-113
Chinese recovery of control over,

114. 116-140
Japanese attempts to disrupt

in Manchuria. 166-167. 168
Kuomintang secret service attempt

to infiltrate. 149-151. 168-171
and Nationalist Government during

Northern Expedition. 115-117
pre-1927 background. 107-110
reform of, 138-140
and Wuhan Government. 105. 160-

162

See also Chang Fu-yun
Chinese Student Alliance. 49-53

reaction to 1911 Revolution, 69
Chinese Student dub (Harvard) .

48-49

Chinese Student's Monthly. 70
Ch'ing Hua College. 34-38. 40
Ch'ing-ming Festival, 18
Chou Hsiang-hsien, 56

204

Chou I-chun. 70

Chou [Tso-min] , 130

Christianity. Chang Fu-yun and, 21-

22. 56-58

Chu. T. S. [Hsu Tsu-shan], 140-141
Chung ch'iu, 18
Communications University (Peking).

42. 104. 156-158
Cook. Frank Gaylord, 56
Cor nw ell. George, 6. 10, 22
Customs Administration. See Chinese
Maritime Customs Administration

Hsieh, Hung-tao, 24
Hsieh Tso-kai. 44
Hsu Pao-huang, 87
Hu Shih, 145
Hu Tun-fu. 35
Hurley. PartickJ..

146

Johnston. Sir Reginald, 14. 171
Johnston. C. F. . 119. 121. 122

de Luca. Luigi, 134

Dennis. William Culler. 79-80

Drew. [Edward Bangs] . 48

Edwardes. Arthur Henry Francis,

111, 117. 118-136. 137. 138. 144
Extraterritoriality issue. 127

Fan collection. 42-43
Fang Tu. 137
Feng [Yu-wei] , 130
Ferguson. Dr. J. W. H. , 118

Flip-flop dub (Harvard),

See also T. V. Soong
Fu Chu. See Kuo Tai-chi
Fu-shan hsien, 4. 13

52-53

Kang-i. 12

K'ang Wu. 44-45

Kao En-heng. 102. 103. 153

Keesser. Max. 39

Kishimoto, 142

Koo, Wellington [Ku Wei-chun] , 51,

53

Ku Wei-chun. See Wellington Koo.
Rung, H. H. , 141, 145
Kuo-fang [National Defense

Association] , 52
Kuomintang. 30

policy on Customs and Tariff
autonomy, 115-117, 137-138

secret police attempt to

infiltrate Customs. 147-151,

168-171

Kuo Tai-chi, 117
Kwan Wu Shu. See Chinese Maritime

Customs during Northern Expedition

and Wuhan Government

Greene. Roger, 127

Harvard College, 22, 36-37, 44-49,

51-56, 59-62. 68-73
Harvard Law School. 72-73
Henniker. Florence. 36-37. 74
Honan, Nan-yang ^u. Hsi-ch'uan

hsien. See Ancestral home.
Hori Yoshiatsu. 129-130

La-yueh festival. 19
Lampson, Sir Miles, 111

and A. H. F. Edwardes problem,

125-126, 132. 136
Lantern Festival. 21
Law [Wyndham Ogilvy] . 144
Lawford. 142
Li Han-chang, 26
Li Lan-chou, 91. 94
Li P'eng-fei, 43
Liang Shih-i. 125

205

Lin case. 49-51

Little. Lester Knox. 137. 145. 147.

150. 151. 169
Lo Wen-kan. 111. 156
Lu [Hsueh-p'u], 130
Lu Ken-chi. 149

MacFadden family. 55-56
MacMurray. John V. A.. 72-73
Matsudaira. 91, 175
Maynadiere, Professor, 46
Maze. Frederick W. . 113. 117-118,
121-122. 124, 126. 132. 135-140.
142-143. 144. 151
Merrill, Henry Ferdinand, 39
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peking.

See Wai-chiao Pu
Missionary schools. See Shih-i

school
Moore, Professor, 61

National Tariff Commission, Chang
Fu-yun as chairman of, 113-114,

137
Native Bank Association of Peking

and Tientsin, 131
New Year festival, 19-20
19th Battalion [Shih-chiu Ta-tui] ,

150
Niu Hui-chu. 48

Oudendjik. H. W. E. J. , 129
Outlook [Magazine], Chang Fu-yun1 s
article in, 68-69

Pao-hsi, 37

P'u-i [Emperor], 171

Russell, Emmet, 53-54

Saltonstall, Leverett, 54-55, 179

Sayre, Francis, 55

Seymour, Sir Horace James, 147

Shang Hsiao-yun, 156

Shen Shu-yu, 142

Shigemitsu, Mamoru. 140, 166

[Shih-chiu Ta-tui]. See 19th

Battalion

Shih-i school [Shih-i hsueh-kuan] ,
5-7, 10-11. 14, 15. 16 17. 21-
22. 33

Smith. C. H. . [American
Commissioner, Siberian
intervention], 91, 93, 174-175
Soong, T. V. [Sung Tzu-wen], 52,
69. 71, 103-106. 113. 116, 149-
150. 154-155. 157-158. 160-162,
171

and Chang Fu-yun' s resignation
from Customs Administration
(1932), 145-146

and negotiations over Edwardes and
Maze appointments. 119-136,

140-141
and Lend Lease and Yalta

Agreement, 147
Sun-Joffe Communique, 103-104, 155,

158-159
Sun Yat-sen. 24. 30, 103, 153-156,

157
Sung Tzu-wen. See T. V. Soong

Tai Li, 150

T'ang Erh--ho. Ill

T'ang Lu-yuan, 39

T'ao, 150. 169

Tariff Revision Commission [Pien-

ting Huo-chia Hui] .. 128
Temple Hill English School. Chefoo.

See Shih-i school
Ting, K. T. , 142
Truman, Harry S., letter to T. V.

Soong regarding status of Outer

Mongolia, 146
Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, 87, 88
Ts'ao K'un, 156
Ts'ao Yun-hsiang, 78

206

Tsou Chia-lai, 37

Tu T'ung-tao, 161

Tuan, Prince. 12

Tuan Wang. See Prince Tuan

Tuan-wu festival, 18

Tung-mu Kung-hsueh, 24. A3

United Nations Organizational
Meeting. 145

Wai-chiao Pu. 37-38

independence of Peking factional
politics. 81-82

service in, 77-81
Wai-wu Pu. 40
Wang Cheng-t'ing. 11, 136
Wang Ch'ung-hui. 68, 78. 153
Wang I-jung. 4. 12-13

letter to niece during Boxer

Rebellion. 12-13
Washington Naval Disarmament

Conference, 102, 152
Wei Tao-ming. 145
Wen Shu-te. 10-11
Westengard. Jan. 72-73
Wilson. George Grafton. 61
Wu. C. C. See Wu Ch'ao-shu
Wu Ch'ao-shu. 117. 118-119
Wu Chiu-fang, 156
Wu Hsien. 44
Wu P'ei-fu. Chang Fu-yun's interview

with. 102, 153. 154. 156
Wu T'ieh-ch'eng, 165
Wuhan Government (1927). 104-106.
160-162

Yalta Agreement, and problem of
outer Mongolia's independence.

145-146

Yin Lan-sheng. 149
Yokotake. Mr.. 128. 129
Yueh-sheng. 20

ELAINE CAMPBELL GAUSTAD

Education

College of Marin
Kentfield, California

University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

State University of New York

at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York

University of California
Berkeley, California

1971-1973
History

B.U. S. Asian Studies
December 1977

M.A. History
June 1980

SUNY Stony Brook - Fudan 1980-1982

University Exchange Program History

Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC

1982 to Present

Ph.D. Program in History

Work Experience

Research Assistant
University of California

Professor F. Wakeman, Jr.
1982 to 1985

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